What Sunflowers Have To Teach Us About Aging Into Success

Sunflowers chase the sun, the object of their desire.

When they are young, their heads rotate to soak up as much warmth and light as possible. But as they get older, their stems become too rigid to move and track the sun. 

Inflexibility comes with age and maturity.

All sunflowers choose to face East when they can no longer turn their necks, and for the longest time, no one knew why. Wouldn’t they get just as much sun facing West? To find out, scientists took some sunflowers and forced them to face West. 

The answer surprised them.

East-facing flowers were more prolific than west-facing ones. In the warmth of the rising sun, they released their pollen 30 minutes sooner and attracted more bees. These sunflowers grew bigger and produced more and higher-quality seeds. They optimized for their newfound immobility, with great success.

Humans become more rigid and inflexible with age too.

Our blood vessels, no matter what shape we’re in, stiffen as we get older. Our brains have deep cognitive ruts carved into them, from years of thinking the same thoughts. In middle-age, our lives are more habitual, less novel, and less open to opportunity. We dismiss the newfangled and that which we don’t understand. Our perspective narrows.

Sunflowers lose their heliotropism, but humans lose their curiosity.

What can we do to adjust and accept the inevitable truths of aging? We can work on our cognitive flexibility, our heart health, and shake up our routine. That’s obvious. 

But what can we do to OPTIMIZE our situation? How do we know we are facing East?

Let me know what you think. 

Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons