When you pick a flower, you are touching us with the past, so to speak, and repeating a timeless gesture. What man, since Adam, has not looked admiringly at these beauties, or held a bloom in his hand at one time?

Since the beginning, flowers have held places in man’s heart and his abode. Greeks and Romans outdid each other in the lavish use of flowers. Their banquet floors were strewn, ankle-deep, with flowers and floral scents filled the air because of a belief that their fragrance purified the atmosphere and minimized intoxication.

Housewives in the olden days, like their modern counterparts, saved on marketing money to buy a nosegay or a bunch of roses for the house. The scented helleborne was preferred because it was used to break the spells of witches and magicians.

Modern Turkmenistan was, for a time, ruled by a madman named Saparmyrat Niyazov. He called himself the Prophet and was wealthy beyond all comprehension, stealing the country blind and building huge monuments to himself throughout the region.

During his reign he banned beards, gold teeth, opera, and forbid education after the ninth grade on the theory that uneducated people were easier to govern. He renamed the twelve months of the year, using his own name for January and names of family members for the other months.

He isolated the country from the outside: no internet, no cell phones, no satellite communications, no international telephones. Criticism was not allowed; anybody who dared either disappeared or was tortured in his prisons.

He made Turkmenistan into a heaven for himself and a hell for his people.

In the midst of a glut of information and with a risk of drowning in a sea of information through the wonders of internet technology we are somewhat dazed at the extent of human intelligence and skills that allow experts to achieve material success in so many areas.

We can respond to this explosion of information by becoming even more dazed to the extent where our own initiatives become paralysed, or we can feel motivated to accomplish what it is that we consider is worthwhile and will bring us personal life satisfaction.