Sunshine, Sunflowers and Sisters: A Place Where Nothing Else Matters

Picture of sunflowers at the sunflower field

As several other Wittenberg students this weekend, I found myself meandering through the chaotic, yet beautiful patch of sunflowers. Hundreds of them.


I don't know if words can do the scene justice but let me give it a try: The colors, vivid and vibrant, looked straight out of an camera filter. The golden flower heads, some tattered and some in full blossom, all faced toward the sun. The green stalks twined throughout the field, their rough textures snaking underfoot. And all of this under the canopy of an impossible blue sky, with a few puffy clouds occasionally interrupting the sun's warm, gentle, touch.

I went with a couple of my sisters, and of course we had to take the obligatory group pictures, each of us squatting in our much-rehearsed sorority squats.

But after the pictures, we each kind of went our separate ways and I found myself in a world where nothing else really seemed to matter. I could no longer hear the cars whooshing by right next to the field, or the other people squealing in delight as they captured the moment with dozens of selfies.  Instead, I heard the rhythmic hum of the bees, the slight rustle of the nearby trees, and the sweet melodic whistling of the tiny birds; it was nature's symphony, and I was the audience of one.

And in this moment, my mind was solely focused in the present. The here and the now. And afterwards, I realized what a rarity that is: for a college girl with a billion different preoccupations to be truly aware of her surroundings, and to be enraptured by everything around her.

It was so pleasant, refreshing even, to have a few minutes of solitude to be away from the constant buzzing of my phone, which as of late seems to be glued to my hand. I really wonder what the world would be like without instagram, Facebook, snap chat, and the nagging desire to always be connected. Would people be nicer? Less dismissive? Would they have more time for what truly mattered? Would they appreciate a sunflower for more than just the amount of instagram likes they can get? Hmm…I wonder.