Some people may say – “we should be like the sunflower”. Why would they say that. The sunflower faces the sun and turns its head as the sun moves from east to west during the day. Similarly, we could, in life, choose who our sun and follow them day and night to evolve as a better human being.

Each of us have the privilege of choosing our own sun in life. It could be either of our parents, a sibling, a friend, a neighbour or even a colleague at work. It could be a public figure as well. It does not matter. We will always choose someone, who is a role model for us , in life.

This phenomenon is called “Phototropism”. The stem of the sunflower grows in such a way that it will bend towards the sun. Similarly, in our lives, we need to discover who our sun is and need to learn from them everyday of our lives. We, as humans can have more than one sun too as we are more privileged than the sunflower, who has only one sun.

During our childhood, in most cases, the parents become our sun and role models in life. As we grow up , our friends tend to influence our lives, more than our family. Then it is the turn of colleagues at the workplace, who make all the difference to our lives.

When they say, we have to to be like the sunflower – what they mean is that , we need to decide whom do we follow to learn the best in life. One of the leadership theory in management talks of “followership”. Just like the olden days, the students considered the “Guru” or teacher as their role model and followed whatever they said blindly, because the belief was that , whatever they said or did was in their best interest.

Similarly, every day of our lives ,we have to determine who our role model is, whom we may metaphorically call the sun. It could still be our parents, teachers, friends, siblings, neighbours or colleagues at work or could be different people at different stages of life , too.

As the sunflower follows the sun, it grows. Similarly, if we follow our role models in life, we always may grow just like the sunflower does. It is up to us to determine our role models. We have the liberty to have different role models ,for different aspects of life too.

The sunflower does not look at the other flowers around and change its direction. Similarly, we also need to be focused ,on who our sun is in life and follow them diligently. The more focused our followership, the more successful, we could be in life.

As I said earlier, unlike the sunflower , we are more privileged as we can have more than one sun ,in life. We can further change our sun for learning in different phases of our lives too. It is up to us to define who our sun is and learn from, on a continual basis without fail.

It could happen that sometimes we may make mistakes and choose the wrong sun in our lives. We are human and it is natural to err , at times. But, we could again learn from the sunflower and change our direction to the new sun , as we have determined for our success in life.

Let us learn from the sunflower every day.

S Ramesh Shankar

17th Sep 2023