I found myself revisiting a thought from yesterday when I was in conversation with someone who was challenging me on my lack of belief. I had pointed at a flower that happened to be nearby and said, “Most people would just say, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty flower'”, but when I look at it, I know I’m staring at thousands of years of evolution of that flower that it didn’t pick, but the pollinators chose. That there were plants didn’t make it because they were off a shade of color or shape from what we see now.

The conversation moved on and I didn’t get to finish the thought. I finished it earlier.

Flowers are pretty because pollinators made them so and because we said, “oh, these are pretty” and cultivated them further. So when I’m looking at a flower, I’m looking at seemingly infinite amount of chances to be something else. But these changes to make the flower what it is now came from choices made by more than one species.

Each of those species are affected by seemingly countless factors. Seasons, temperatures, food sources, oxygen levels, rainfall, and species evolution for all of those.

It’s amazing. It’s beautiful to consider, all those little things that made that flower a flower that is appealing to us, and why would it be appealing to us? There’s an interesting question too, maybe that’s how we found the bees to get at their honey. I don’t know.

Yes, that is a beautiful flower, and now maybe you’ll see how beautiful they are. They are the survivors our world picked.

For now.