You’re standing by the shop window, it’s Friday, everything glowing yellow and smelling sweet. People pick out flowers. They know that in a week there’ll be a jar of cloudy water and rotting stems. In two weeks — the trash bin. No one pretends the bouquet will last longer than a vacation or even the weekend.

And yet you catch yourself arguing over the shade of pink. Staring at the wrapping for a long time. Why does it suddenly matter?

If you think it through — it’s weird: it’s better to give something that lasts. Stone will outlive centuries, a tree can grow by the house. Even another mug will stay on the shelf for a long time. But no one gives a brick for a birthday or a cobblestone for a wedding.

Flowers aren’t just things by themselves, but a process inside the gift. You give someone a piece of time. It starts to vanish right away — right in your hands, even as you carry the bouquet down the street and wonder how it’ll be received.

It’s like an hourglass you can’t flip back. Watch it run — then it’s all gone.

Every ritual has room for a gift that won’t last. Not just flowers: fruit on a plate disappears fast, pastries vanish before the feast ends. No culture has made eternal gifts for holidays or goodbyes.

There’s a feeling — the shorter a gift’s life, the stronger you feel the moment of giving.

Money can be spent another way, it doesn’t lose shape for anyone in the exchange: you can get it back anytime, no forever-spending gesture.

But a flower dies here and now.

If there was a magic flower that never wilted — you’d have to throw it away on purpose just to keep the ritual of letting go; otherwise it’d just become room decor and stop being a gift.

At funerals it’s clear: you lay the bouquet where its life matches the last day of the one you came for. Two short lives pass side by side — it feels right to leave something alive and temporary with those who leave forever.

With love it’s even more interesting: you bring fragile beauty knowing the story’s end — it’ll end soon.

In this is the confession of everyone’s biggest fear: nothing lasts forever; but right now it’s very beautiful.

A gift without an expiry date would be an investment in the future or a relationship; flowers work because they’re fully tied to this moment and will vanish with it.

If the meaning of love hides in the ability to share what’s doomed to die… Maybe the true name of love is loss?