Roses

"You darling are a true gentleman, you know how to treat a lady, so it seems. People say diamonds are the way to a woman's heart but that is entirely incorrect.
BUt yet I am still to wonder why a rose represents love if a rose dies."


And my response:


all things die, or so they say, but I rose will last for years and years. If you take a rose even cut and open the end to place it in water, floating there in the solution that was likely life for us all sometime way back. The Rose will grow small roots allowing you to, if you so wish, move it into soil and keep it watered and sheltered. After that you may move it yet again to the out of doors where it will flourish and grow into a bush of it's own producing many roses and even tho' the buds may wax and wain there are always more to come from the bush that is the core of the rose and there are always seeds for another day from each bud that's danced it's waltz and come to rest.
To me when the rose is looked at as a whole, to show life rather than as a token only. It is then as you see it's roots and it's seeds, it's leaves and thorns all along with the 'jewel' of it's buds and blooms, that is when our roses truly become a symbol of love. For they remind us that love will change but if we care for it love will also grow and endure even if during it's time it will wax and wain through many cycles just as does the rose with it's blooms throughout it's rather long life.

There is another way to look at this just as apt, even if beauty fades, even if love or ourselves may die there is still joy to be found. The petals of a rose inspire something in the heart, the beauty strikes a chord and for a time the heart is lifted by these wings of joy. Perhaps it is sad when these wings have flown themselves till exhausted and must have new inspiration to fly again, yet even so once our hearts were exulted to the sky. The exultation does not have to be immortal to be real, or to be savored. And there is then the chance to seek it anew.

Together these show the rose, as love, to be both fleeting and eternal, for having seen a rose is not that image left on your minds eye ever after? Have you ever forgotten roses where since you learned of them?
The rose is at once both transient as it's smallest petal and lasting as it's largest root. So too is love, we must simply remember that love, like the rose, is alive and needs care or like the rose it will wither and die if starved of sustenance.

It's how I strive to treat both romance and friendship, for in the end they are not so truly different than one breed of rose is to another.

Regards,
Sol