Nature’s Last Throw of the Dice
6 years, 4 months, 4 days, 18 hours
17 March 2023
About 10 years ago we were on a family holiday on the Île de Oléron, a lovely island off the west coast of France.
And on that holiday my wife and I chanced upon a hibiscus bush, for sale in a small nursery, whose flowers were a gorgeous bright orange. So even though we agreed it was going to be traumatic to get it back to the UK, we couldn’t resist buying it, and somehow managed to get home with it in one piece.
Now that hibiscus lives in a corner of our conservatory, where the protection of the glass saves it from Yorkshire frost and gales. But the glass doesn’t protect it from the accidental indifference of busy lives, and technological failings in the watering system and the vents. So sometimes the poor hibiscus gets parched, and sometimes fried, and sometimes chilled. And it really doesn’t like any of these things, and all its leaves fall off.
And what I have noticed over many years is that, like many other plants, when its life is on the edge is when it suddenly produces the most beautiful flowers. It is nature’s last throw of the dice to try to pass its life to the next generation.
Last month, at the Transforming Transportation conference I was attending at the World Bank, a speaker drew attention to what she saw as a dramatic raising of ambition in cities across the world. No longer just trying to fix things at the margins, many were embarking on programmes to transform the quality of life they offered to their inhabitants.
And it struck me as she spoke that there was a strange dichotomy between a world that in some ways is a basket case and feels at considerable risk (whether from rogue states wielding weapons of mass destruction, societal tensions boiling over from inequality, or climate warming endangering all life on earth) and one whose determined ambition for the future is becoming more and more utopian.
And it was then I thought of our hibiscus, and saw it as a metaphor for the energy and creativity that is being unleashed to try to bring the world back from the brink. And it struck me that as the level of ambition of our clients continues to climb, so the calibre of advice that a firm like KPMG can offer becomes more and more important.
Said hibiscus has always brought a smile to my face when it flowers, and now as a symbol of hope it will make me happier still.
I share it with you here, the Hibiscus of Happiness.