Honestly
The older bee just shook his head and left.
I used to know a poor man who had these dreams. Every night, he would see his entire life from before its beginning to after its end. And every morning, he’d wake up embarrassed at his selfish life. He would wake up and tell himself:
“This selfishness is what I need to master. When I do, I will be rich and I’ll be happy. People will love me.”
But then the selfishness would always come back. He was a mess. He would talk to people, and as he talked, he would try to remember his life and how it played out.
Eventually he grew tired of poverty and loneliness. He thought:
The world wants style and poverty and rebellion in a cute little package. It wants fakers and liars, slapchops and snuggies, billionaires and drug habits. I will become that billionaire. Those monkeys will be on my back. Can you see them? They’re made of gold, they’re like nothing you’ve ever seen. I am a shiny new thing.
And so one night, delirious, he tried dreaming of shamwows and oxycleans like everyone else. He focused on that billionaire lifestyle of jet planes and champagne, and watched The Secret four times in a row just before bedtime. But instead of waking up rich, he woke up a sunflower seed.
And almost immediately, forgot about ever being a human, and started stressed himself out, about shooting out roots, about sprouting. It all seemed so incredibly difficult. Even after he sprouted, he grew worried he wasn’t good enough, his seeds wouldn’t be good enough, wouldn’t be worthy of his place in the soil. He woke every day in fear: “Will I flower correctly, or do fuck it up and die before casting my seeds into the wind?”
And indeed, he did begin to wither away, not from ineptitude, but from worry. The bees whispered amongst themselves: “A flower worried about its own flowerness never blossoms.”
Day by day, he grew sicker.
But a wise old bee came to visit him and asked:
“Why do you worry?”
And the baby sunflower replied:
“I worry because I used to be human. I don’t know what it is to grow for sure, confident you will fruit.”
The bee shook his head. And said: “What comes up always comes down. Messages are being sent to you, but there’s so much interference. You listen and you wait. You do the right things, enjoy the sun and listen to the whispers inside yourself.”
And the little sunflower, he asked: “But what if it doesn’t rain for three weeks, and I shrivel and die?”
The older bee just shook his head and left. “Then you’re dead, dummy.”
A month later, just as he began to flower, the drought came. After the first week, the sunflower was as sick as he’d ever been. He wondered if this was where he died, but somehow, his body adapted. His leaves withered up and folded within themselves. His peduncle got tighter than it had ever been.
But by the second week without rain, he began to see his own death. Each day he woke, deathly sick, dying for sure, but beginning to feel an inner glow.
A mean bee, the one none of the other bees had ever liked came to taunt him. He said: “Don’t flower, don’t try. Trying only lead to expectations, and expectations only lead to disappointment. Disappointment is where monsters are made, when we find out how indifferent the world really is. After we’ve told ourselves we flower, after we’ve invested our lives to being good servants, we die in droughts. We should be anything but good servants. We are cursed.”
But the mean bee’s sting failed to implant itself into the flower. He was too tired, and his inner glow was indifferent to anything the bee said. It knew death was coming, but it was glowing stronger than ever.
The mean bee flew away.
But the sunflower said to himself: “I was forever groping for substance and meaning within myself. My perfect children would be nothing but chicken scratch and emotion and another chance at an imperfect life. It matters not whether the rain comes.”
And the rain came, but the sunflower was too damaged. He had withered irreversibly, had begun his own descent into death. On the inside he started singing. The bees heard it and came close. They listened.
The song he sang, it went like this:
“Dale a tu cuerpo alegría, Macarena, que tu cuerpo e’ pa’ darle alegría y cosa’ güena,” and the bees got closer.
With his last breath, the sunflower sang:
“Heeeey macarena!”
