Every morning I sit at my desk and look over to the shelf.
“How are you supposed to water a Peace Lily?”
Over the last 2 months, this question has flitted and spiralled through the chambers of my mind like autumn leaves. It has begun to punctuate my life.
I have begun to see lilies everywhere.
Part 1: Re-planting
My peace lily is perched in my room on the top shelf. I often look at it with an uncertain frow. Like a concerned parent. Over the last few years, it has popped and jived. Sometimes bursting with life. Other times wilted and sombre.
I sit at a narrow desk with my screen and laptop. To my left, stretches out a beautiful balcony. The orange tiles stick out like a tongue into a pine forest.
My lily has had an itinerant history in my apartment. It has been paraded around different sunlit spots. It was a gift from a past relationship. Our relationship flowered and wilted yet I have been determined to keep the plant alive.
During my upcoming travels there is a chance that I and the Lily-gifter are in the same city and may be able to meet after years. In light of this, she wrote to me this week:
“Hey Rahul! I wrote you a letter that I am hoping to send to you before we see each other. It covers a lot of the feelings that I had towards you, how I’m feeling now, and some apologies…”
I have made my lily’s health a priority over the last while. Nonetheless, I have learned that some leaves will just wilt. A flower cannot be asked to bloom. All I can do is water, the way I know how.
So, I took this letter from the past as a chance to practice. I asked her to read the letter to me over a video call as I listened.
“I knew in my heart that the distance and moving away was important for me when we were together. I also wanted to apologise for somethings.”
I heard every single word and the embedded stories. The stories and logic seemed to roll through my headphones like vines, wrapping and unwrapping around my head. If I went to the feelings in my belly, the reasons and logic chimed through my ears evanescent like the wind.
Truthfully, there were moments when I sunk into the story of myself. Reasons why I should be outraged. Fertiliser for the weeds of inadequacy. Weeds that threaten to web and ensnare. Cut them at the stem, then pull out the roots. Stories, stories, stories.
As we ended the video call, I looked over to my Lily. Re-planting has to be the first step. Re-planting is like an act of forgiveness. Forgiveness for time lost. A chance to shake off dusty soil. New roots take their own time.
Part 2: Budding
I shared my Lily problems with friends I trust. Friends who probably share the same social media feed and similar dating profiles. Adam, Raz, Kevin and I gathered around the marble table at their house like it was the war room.
Adam wasn’t too interested in plants at the moment. Raz had taken over care of the lily that loomed in the corner of the sitting room, tall and mighty. Two glistening leaves that seemed to palm the sunlight.
Kev’s Peace Lily had a bunch of glowing leaves and a flower in bloom. Mine had none. Wilted leaves.
I couldn’t understand. Our lilies were the same age. Similar pots and soil. Hell, it looked like it was bought in the same store.
Trying to understand felt like trying to solve a problem. Not getting an answer felt like something was wrong with my Lily. Or, worse, something was wrong with me.
“Have you tried fixing the drainage?”
“Lilies thrive on neglect.”
I bore my Lily problems out on the table and I was met with sympathy and careful consideration. In the war room, many solutions were proffered.
How do you water a peace lily?
It can be frustrating to sit with a question that is unanswerable. Or rather, a question that may unravell naturally, but does not yield to interrogation. Good friends are those who are there for all sorts of interrogation and detective-work. Wise friends know that silence is the soil for budding that takes its own time.
Part 3: Purple Lilies
The following is a fictional re-imagining of real-life interactions. Identity has been obscured.
The Drug and Alcohol unit felt industrial except for an assortment of plants that bloomed on the windowsill. They turned away from the room. Away from the papers, computers and white light. Hunched over as if peeking down the six stories. Sipping the sunlight over the edge.
Among them was a Peace Lily. He was a strange lily, not with the usual white flower. He had a large flower with a deep purple tinge.
Peter had just been admitted to the ward. He was like the purple lily. When I met him, he stood tall in the doorframe of his room with a t-shirt that ran tightly down his arms and thin torso. He spoke softly; yet wielded an intensity in his dark eyes.
Peter was happy to speak to me in a student-interview. I was quick to use the sacred privilege of a medical student to ask the perennial question:
“So, what brings you here?”
Peter recently realised that he was addicted to a drug that most people probably haven’t heard of. He tried to quit cold turkey by himself without realising the harsh, potentially deadly withdrawal effects.
Peter’s story felt like a thick vat of treacle that would vortex you in. His hand belied his calm demeanour as he fiddled with his own fingers.
He was brought into the world against all odds. His parents didn’t want a child and used every measure to prevent it. But Peter was resilient. Even as a foetus he persisted against a world turned against him. Already unwanted, he came to this world under the care of a single mother who shuffled aimlessly between men, amphetamines and paranoid delusions. By the time he was 8, Peter had seen things that people should never see. As a result, his hands always shook, and panic stuck to his internal world like a shadow.
Despite his early life, in his teenage years Peter was under the care of a wonderful grandma. In his 20s, Peter moved to Europe and found much success working as a designer and a musician. Soon, substances snuck into his life. They crept into his music sets and work-related gatherings. Ushered in with the warmth of invited guests. They hung around like ghosts. Ghosts from a traumatic past.
As Peter spoke, I remembered the purple lily. On initial glance, it didn’t feel like he belonged. But there was something beautiful in the purple tinge. Peter had tried on his own to detox, but it was only the help of his friend, his friend’s mother and his grandmother that he had managed to admit himself into the ward. Peace Lilies do very poorly in self-watered pots.
Peter helped me realise a key mistake in caring for my own lily. Over the last year I had mistakenly put it in a self-watering Oslo pot with a lid at the bottom.
Self-watering rots a lily’s roots. We cannot self-water. Once I liberated the bottom lid of my pot, and gave it room to breathe, the plant seemed to relax into the pot.
Part 4: Our Lily
My quest to figure out how to water a peace lily took root at home. I returned to New Zealand to find that my mother had replaced the children that had left home with two ginormous Peace Lilies.
With a hint of Lily-envy I reached for my phone. It was time I asked the internet how to water a peace lily. The YouTube titles seemed to scream at me:
HOW TO WATER A PEACE LILY.
HOW TO STOP WILTING AND BROWNING LEAVES.
HOW TO GROW FLOWERS ON YOUR LILY.
I grimaced. When did marketing become just ‘HOW TO’s’ and ‘TOP 5’s’?. We are ants speeding down an information highway. And there are many tolls on the way.
My scroll through YouTube inspired a scroll through Facebook.
Headlines bannered my screen.
October 7th, 2023.
“HAMAS ATTACKS”.
“ISRAEL TO RETILIATE”.
How do you water peace?
The horrific buzz of war seemed from the portal of my phone screen into my family home. A strange sickness overcame my body. I couldn’t turn away. From social media I bounced from posts to Google searches. A music festival for peace. An attack. A limp body in the back of a truck.
It was early days. The impending chaos of retaliation hung in the air like fresh blood. A smell that would seem to whisper massacre.
Anger. Helplessness. Shock. Even excitement. The portal of my phone opened into a reality vivid yet confusingly distant. The space between this world and my own remained a perverse spectacle.
I tossed my lily-mission aside and read more about the conflict. Social media had picked sides. In the following weeks, I would learn that most of my circle who chose to share their opinion, shared stories and realities that communicated the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people. Some Jewish friends from America would share outcry about the misinformation and potential propaganda against Israel.
How do you water peace?
…
Later that evening, my Mum told me how she watered the peace lilies at home. Once every couple of weeks, she would take them outside and water them fully until they started draining at the bottom. She would then let the water drain fully before putting the plants back inside.
My quest to water my peace lily has been a foray into discarding assumptions. Opinions, identities and habits tower over dying lily-flowers like the walls of a dilapidated castle.
I have learned of the stories that can make us feel trapped. How we wield advice as a way to stave off feelings of unworthiness. Whether it be substances or ideas, the ghosts of the past can linger in a lifeless search for lost connection. I have learned how opinions and identities, amplified by the chimera of modern social media, only further the creation of Others. The death of human compassion lays at the altar of the Other. The death of lily-flower. The costs of our protected beliefs, world views and perceived Selves.
…
It has been two months now and my Lily is thriving. It still has some brown tips and often I look over at it with an uncertain frow. I took the bottom lid off the pot and water it every second week. I water it according to my Mum’s advice: water it until the soil starts draining, and let it drain itself.
A flower is yet to bloom this season. Whether it does or doesn’t, whatever the colour of the petals, I accept that this Lily will bloom at the right time.
