The Victorian Language of Flowers was used for decades to relay feelings that people had a hard time expressing or were too embarrassed to share. Each flower has its own meaning, and each color further explains the emotions they imitate. The flower we will be looking at today is the Geranium. The flower has five symmetrical petals and typically blooms in cool-toned colors. True geraniums are not to be confused with pelargoniums, as the latter is an annual or tender perennial. In folklore, there is a superstition that snakes and flies avoid specifically white geraniums. In the Victorian Language of Flowers, the True Geranium symbolizes a host of things including availability, constancy, deceit, envy, folly, friendship, passing frustrations, health, preference, stupidity, and true friendship.
Through our discussion of the Victorian Language of Flowers, it has become apparent that flowers carry a variety of meanings. Oftentimes the meanings conflict. To me, the juxtaposition of the Geranium symbolizing both deceit and friendship gives the flower its own unique meaning and application. The flower adopts a new meaning of internal conflict.
Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We always discuss and apply these thoughts as we work to build and develop the world, but I feel I rarely hear it reflected interpersonally. In every encounter, there are countless ways to interpret a person’s words, body language, and tone. Most frequently, arguments are caused by the miscommunication of these things. In an argument, there are often thoughts of pain and confusion about how someone may callously hurt you in such a way, but in an equal and opposite reaction, the other person often feels the same. I rarely hear this law applied interpersonally, and within a person even less.
As a mechanical engineering student, I frequently study the internal reactions of materials in different situations, observing the coexistence of two opposing forces in a stable member. The way I see it, the same is happening with the symbolism of the Geranium. True friendship exists because of the ability to turn off your brain and be stupid. It exists because of an individual’s ability to recognize times when they were deceitful or envious and to move past those frustrating emotions for the sake of that friendship. Similarly, I think people’s emotions exist in the same vein — that you can feel remorse for an action but know that it had to happen. In a more trivial example, I knew someone who adored carrots but was allergic to them. Both emotions existed: the desire to eat the carrots and the fear of the reaction. The emotions would always be in coexistence with one another. He’d eat them on occasion as the desire for the taste overpowered the fear of the reaction and vice versa, but there were frequent times of feeling frozen, when he couldn’t tell what was winning.
Being stuck in the in-between where conflicting emotions compete for dominance can be difficult. It’s almost paralyzing as you try to finally do something. The indecision tears you to pieces, making you feel isolated. If that is what the contradictory coexisting emotions make you feel, then what’s the next rational step?
I don’t know if there is any proper step at that point. A pros and cons list could be drafted, but at the end of the day, the values of each pro and each con might vary in significance.
While I understand that a Geranium doesn’t exactly have a logical brain for thought, I still ponder its duality. The fact that it is accepted to mean two starkly different things is a comfort, as it almost normalizes indecision. It says that two things can be true at once, just as two emotions can be true at once. So, while not everyone may experience your exact scenario, we as people are tied to each other by emotion, and someone out there has felt similarly, which means no one is ever truly alone in an experience.
