(The bottom photo is of a law school building at UC Berkely.)

We’re flowers and we aren’t flowers though, right? We have the curse and the blessing of self-awareness. We can see we are different, and as soon as we try to be more like flowers, we are less like flowers because we are trying. The humor of the human condition.

We’re designed differently. We have the means to plan and strive and create and make music and worry over right and wrong and feel with our hearts and think with the minds we are given. We are also able to bloom in the sun, to stay in touch with that flower capacity that is both primal and sublime. If we develop only one gift when we've been given two, it’s like riding a bike using only one pedal, unnecessarily awkward and incomplete. When we are balanced, pedaling with two feet, maybe then we function fully as human beings.