Coffee Cup Half Moons

For anyone who might not get the title, it translates to “In search of a bouquet of people,” and it arose from a simple observation I made this morning.

(No, I’m not referring to the lingering sensual remnants we experience after a sip of wine …  :-D)

First, I want to lead into the subject by saying how a bouquet of flowers is often viewed as much more beautiful than the flower itself.  Obviously, if the single flower were completely lacking in beauty, the resulting bouquet would need to seek alternate avenues of beauty to achieve it.

Secondly, I’m specifically referring to bouquets of the same flower.  Examples: a dozen roses, 6 carnations of the same color, etc.

So how does this relate to people?  I noticed two people at the gas station this morning, a woman and a man, each wearing tan slacks and a light blue button down shirt.  Given that I am really not one to notice attire (at all), this alone was a good example of contextual violence, since it grabbed my attention.  In fact, I thought the two people were correlated in some way, even though they were driving completely different cars– make, model, color, size–and they were on opposite sides of the pumps.

Anyway, it dawned on me that we often feel somewhat cheated when we see two (or more) people wearing identical outfits for no apparent reason.  It’s like we expect some grand story to be the cause, yet a dozen roses is simply amplified beauty.

No, all the bouquets of people that we find appealing are in things like church choirs, or sports teams, company employees, etc. where the underlying story is rather predictable.  Six carnations would seem pretty unexpected, even at a funeral or wedding where massive amounts of bouquets are hardly even stand out contextually.

I’m not really trying to prove a deep philosophical point, but I’m pondering where the apparent lack of uniqueness in people caused by random (or at least unrelated) circumstances, linking people in no way but the visual, can bring us the deep sense joy of that bouquet of roses.

It’s a fair argument to say that any group of people is quite a lovely bouquet, as the diversity and contributions they put forth can be astounding, but I suppose that’s not what I’m looking for.

A la recherche d’une bouquet de gens …