Handing Out Your Flowers Before Getting Some of Your Own

"Never suppress a generous thought."
-Camilla E. Kimball  


In high school, I wrote a poem that was published in a book, a collection of writings from Alabama students. The poem is about the irony of how we as a society lavish the dead with flowers. We buy hundreds of bouquets to place at their funerals, and we shower their graves in rosebuds. Yet the person who has passed on never gets to see these or enjoy them. The poem ends with how we should instead be focused on giving people flowers while they are living, celebrating, breathing.

Recently this poem became a great analogy in my life. I was working at the Samford Football Hospitality Tent as an Ambassador with my friend, Hunter Gibbs. I saw a lady walking by in the most beautiful blue, peplum top with jeans that fit her perfectly, wedges, and her hair done in the most gorgeous, high ponytail. She looked like Julia Engel, my favorite Instagram blogger, except with a few more curves. I looked at Hunter and said, "Wow, she looks beautiful." Hunter looked back at me, confused as to why I was telling him this. He asked, "Then why don't you go tell her?" It made me aware of all the times I have withheld compliments or encouragement, just because it meant that I would have to (barely) step out of my comfort zone. But aren't people worth that? I thought of encouragement as being like a bouquet of flowers. The irony is the same for both funeral words and bouquets. It makes just as much nonsense to lift up the deceased with honoring words that no one ever told him or her than to pamper them in flowers they will never see or smell. I want to get to the end of my life and have given away all of the encouragement and flowers that people whom I meet deserve to receive.

Go lift someone up. Go give someone flowers.



Infinite X's and O's
Claire