Lesser Celandine: Age disgracefully

To the Victorians, Lesser Celandine symbolised ‘joys to come’, a wonderful subtitle for this essence, designed especially to bring optimism and enjoyment of life to those approaching their ‘To the Victorians, Lesser Celandine symbolised ‘joys to come’, a wonderful subtitle for this essence, designed especially to bring optimism and enjoyment of life to those approaching their ‘troisieme age’.

You will see in the photograph that young Lesser Celandines open and shine in the sun.  However, at the first signs of bad weather they fearfully close. With age the petals (like human hair) fade and whiten, enjoying life whatever challenges it brings. 

There is much for ageing humans to look forward to.  Physiologically, our brains will be getting smarter and wiser, our ‘immune memory’ increasing so we get fewer colds, allergies will decline, we will have fewer migraines, sleep better, be less sweaty  and, even when we reach eighty, will have a 95% chance of living for another year.  Age inevitably will bring other unthought of joys.   We will feel more satisfied with life than we have ever been.  We will have learned to balance our emotions more successfully, so be less stressed, know which things we need to worry about and which we can ignore, and deal better with social conflicts.  We can also have more fun as the barriers and baggage we carried our younger days days disappear.  We can get up when we want to, have siestas, do things for enjoyment rather than to earn money and, as Jenny Joseph  beautifully summarises in her poem ‘Warning’, we can also ‘make up for the sobriety of our youth’.   So, if you see some senior citizen wearing purple with a red hat that doesn’t suit them, spending all their pension on brandy, going out in the rain in their slippers or eating three pounds of sausages in one go, they are probably just have  a natural joy for life or are taking Lesser Celandine essence.

Picture © Pixabay jACLOU-DL