Orchids and The Art of Rest
Celine, the Orchid, was the first plant that piqued my curiosity. On my 28th birthday, instead of a bouquet of flowers, my mom gifted me an Orchid. It was a bold move. I had not taken care of a single living thing for years and I would always use my “busy” lifestyle as an excuse. (But who in the world is too busy to water a plant?!) At 28, I was slowly coming out of my hustle-mind, a time when I started to question a lot of the systems that were all around me--like the fact that you have to have an overwhelmingly busy career to be considered a great citizen or that you can’t wear white after labour day. You know, those types of systems. And so, enters this Orchid (with my mother, Orchids can’t walk...yet), and I’m kind of thrown off: I am responsible for a thing that could die. Bouquets of flowers are easy, they come to you half dead and when they finally pass on in a week or two it’s expected; there is no guilt or shame. You just move on! But with a living plant that your mother gifted you at the ripe and marriagable age of 28? This is different. So, I took it as a sign (from my mother) that I better get my life together.
So this Orchid, it sits there. And I sit too, looking at it. And we wait. We wait until it dies. Because that’s what will happen right? But this time is different…I’m curious about her. Or, I push my fear out of the way just a bit to allow curiosity to sneak in. Why are her flowers shaped like little mouths? Her roots are so alive they push themselves out of their pot, but why? I name her Celine. She’s so effortlessly elegant.
So I commit to her. Till death do us part. But like most marriages…just joking. We had a really great run, then in the Fall - about six months later - she started to lose her beautiful flowers. Shame surfaced up for me, flower by flower, until Celine was completely bare. To be honest, I thought it was kind of unfair that you put so much effort into something only to have it fall apart — but then I remembered my previous relationships.
As I was getting ready to put her in the compost, I realized something: her giant leaves are still so strong and lush, and most of her stem was green…this is not what a dead plant looks like. So I Googled and found a horticulture community thread that was obsessed with Orchids (actually there are quite a few of them, cute nerd alert!) I read a suggestion that entailed cutting off the browned part of her spike - where the flowers once lived - so that the plant could focus its energy on keeping what’s alive, healthy.
Giving energy to a metaphorical dead spike is something I did often in my early and mid twenties. I stayed in relationships that were toxic, with people who were not interested in my well-being or any introspection on their part. We can give energy to a lot of dead-end things like: jobs, acquaintances who call themselves friends, one-sided friendships, long-term partnerships of any kind, that one relative who won’t stop reminding you that you came to a family event alone, situations (that despite your best efforts are too big for you to change), stubborn customer service occurrences, people that are supposedly into you but jerk you around or only call at midnight, and bad TV (but this one is negotiable.) There is effort, and then there is a one-sided energy pour. An energy pour simply depletes you and doesn’t leave you with any ability to focus on anything else.
So I listened, carefully cutting away the old and hoping to revive Celine. Within the month, Celine had a baby. Yes, you read that right. A ‘keiki’ was born, right at the edge of the spike. Keiki means “baby” in Hawaiian (cue Drake) and looks exactly like the bottom of the mother plant, except it’s located at the top of the plant and is smaller in size to begin with...until it’s fully grown. Behold, the miracle of life...right there in my own apartment. I am a fertile goddess of Love.
I was proud and excited: my Celine used her energy not just to keep herself healthy, but to also give birth to a mini-version of herself.
As it turns out, Orchids are clever energy users and have wicked sex lives. Orchids have a long history of strategic reproductions and self-dissemination. It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of an Orchid - some say it is in Greece B.C., others believe it to be China many moons ago - but everyone agrees these plants have been around for more than 50 million years. With over 28,000 registered species (not including hybrids), Orchid have both male and female reproductive systems and their pollen-like substance is incredibly small, so it can travel easily. In the centre of the flower, is a sort of a mouth, or vagina if we’re being frank, where bees and other insects are very welcome. In fact, throughout the years, Orchids’ mouths have evolved, molding into various shapes, to attract more and more insects. There are some Orchids that even give off female-bee pheromones to attract male bees who fly by. The male bees then come inside (no pun intended), latch onto the “labellum” (the resemblance is too on-the-nose), attempt to reproduce with it and leave with a lot of the Orchid pollen on their bellies, naturally disseminating it as they fly about. This is exactly what the Orchid had planned all along — told you, wicked sex lives. And that’s just one trick of sexual deception the Orchid is capable of. But, all the manipulation aside, how smart too? The Orchid uses very little energy to replicate its genes — and that’s how it got to over 28,000 species across all continents. And, not to mention, into your nearest grocery store.
Keikis are also ways for the Orchid to preserve herself: if she feels like her life is threatened, she will reproduce asexually to create a mini-me so that her legacy lives on.
Orchids are easy-ish to propagate and that’s exactly why you can see them in supermarkets everywhere, sold under the guise of requiring just three ice cubes a week. This simplified approach to watering the Orchid was created because of the popular fear of witnessing Orchids lose flowers - a process called ‘bloom blast’ - in one’s home, equating this process to the plant’s death.
Because of ‘bloom blasts’, it’s a common misconception that Orchids die easily. So what we think is our Orchid’s death, is in fact just more clever plotting. Orchids can often lose buds or blooms because of stress. Imagine yourself in the changing conditions of Fall; would you rather be pretty in full bloom for a few more days or make sure you have enough energy to get through the winter? Exactly. Orchids are not only masters in sexual deception, but are also masters in energy conservation.
It is also said that if you want your Orchid to bloom you can put her in a very dark space for a week, like a closet, then bring her out into bright light--the shock of it will give her a sort of adrenaline rush and send her into bloom. (I mean, same?)
The way Orchids use their energy is an inspiration to me: there is a time to bloom and a time for rest. We focus so much on our blooming period - the productivity of it all and living our “best life” - that we often frown at our resting periods, a time for gathering our strength, nurturing ourselves, and reflection. In a culture where you have to always be onto your next best thing and blooming: no one talks about their next big nap. We’ve all been in a situation where someone says, “so what’s next for you?” And undoubtedly, there’s a panic while we search for something impressive to say, only coming up short and defeated with a response like, “oh, still hustling.” But you know what I really want to say? A nap. I’m taking a nap Susan. A month long nap.
The go-go-go is exactly how we find ourselves in life-changing burnouts or addicted to stimulators/suppressors that’ll either help us keep going or forget about how much we need rest, or worse — saying things like “sleep is for the wicked’. If sleep is for the wicked then I’m the Witch of Queen West. To be fair, I’m only able to criticize this as a several times over recovering workaholic who drank the kool-aid so much that I’m still working on getting myself back to, well, me. And of course I have all the compassion for the situations where we have to work several jobs or put in extra hours; but I hope that we also take a few hours for luxurious nothingness when we can. A state of doing nothing is more difficult than we may think because of the guilt created by our society’s obsession with productivity. But did Celine feel bad when she had to lose her blooms and take some time before having a baby? Absolutely not. She did what was best for her. And that’s true feminism.
We are built on systems that make us believe that pushing ourselves to our edge is what being human is about and how legacies are made. But what these systems don’t warn us about is that it’s easy to fall off the edge.
I cannot talk about energy without talking about depression — that is, there is a true lack of energy when one is depressed. I cannot categorize it for everyone who has experienced depression, but in my personal experience the crippling lack of energy is physical, mental and spiritual. In periods of depression my plants also suffer, I stop caring for them as I have to talk myself into caring for me. There is a lethargy in the air and sometimes things feel so unbearable that I am pulled to sleep - or rest - through them. Jim Carrey (yes the actor and existentialist) made a statement that really resonated with me: “You should think of the word ‘depressed’ as ‘deep rest.’ Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character you’ve been trying to play.” This is a sentiment that was inspired by teacher Jeff Foster, who goes on to say that depression can “contain seeds to a new life”. Although depression is a terrifying state (that is also clinical), it can also be a time of re-birth; that with the necessary deep period of rest, nourishment (medicine, nutritious food, etc.) and grieving, you can come out of it blooming, perhaps just like an Orchid. Luckily, this has been the case for me.
Celine the Orchid was able to create new life after a state of rest; she nurtured the Keiki until it grew to be an adult-sized Orchid. Recently, I’ve noticed Celine and her full-grown Keiki depleting, losing a bit of the volume in their leaves. I repotted them, but I am afraid the cause is more involved than a simple repot: the grown Keiki is taking too much energy, living on top of her creator. The idea of having to cut Keiki off and attempting to give her independence is frightening to me…what if she doesn’t survive? Where there is growth, there is also the end — of comforts, of complacency, of life as we once knew it. But, it’s time that both Keiki and I found our courage to carve out a new path and create a new home, so we don’t deplete poor Celine.
Time for rest is important, we have to protect it feverishly. This is self-love: not letting people take pieces of you (or your time) when you barely have a piece for yourself. Set boundaries that allow you time to retreat into yourself; make time for things that re-energize you. That is my wish for us all.
I hope you take this time of forced rest and own it. And if you are one of the courageous people working overtime on the frontlines: I’ll send you energy in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you.