The Half Flower

In Hawaiian mythology there exists a tale of two star crossed lovers. The beautiful princess Naupaka fell in love with a mere commoner by the name Kaui. Despite their unequivocal love, the two knew they could never get married and so with great strain decided to part ways. While Naupaka belonged to the mountains of Hawaii, Kaui resided near the ocean. Upon her departure, Naupaka offered him half of the flower she wore in her hair. It was the last the two saw of each other. The next day, the plants of the island were so troubled and overturned with sadness that they only bloomed in half flowers as a symbol of their mourning for the departed lovers. The flowers bloomed in a variety of colors.

Thus, the well known Naupaka flowers with its design resembling that of a “half flower” bloomed for all of eternity across the island of Hawaii in remembrance of their lost love.

And so it seems that even great mythologies acknowledge that suffering co-exists with refinement. Even nature cries out when love becomes a relic of a bygone age. As the great writer André Aciman states in one of his greatest novels, “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”. I believe what he meant was that the numbing of pain and its interrelation to indifference robs us of so much of ourselves. When something poetic is lost, do not kill the sorrow you feel. Instead, lend to it a flower or a piece of you that in its own faultless time will transfigure into something remarkable. For the princess and Kaui, it was the Naupaka flowers of Hawaii.