The Intelligence of Growth

Every April when the flowers bloom, I find my personal answer to a question astronomers have asked for ages: Is there other intelligent life in the universe?

Astronomers and dreamers ask that question while looking outward and upward at the skies. Are there other races as intelligent as humans, dwelling somewhere on other planets around other stars? Will we meet them someday? Those questions fascinate me too. They have ever since my youthful days of reading science fiction, staring at night skies.

These days I also turn my gaze in other, closer directions. I define intelligence in different ways. It doesn’t seem too intelligent to me, to only define intelligence in human ways. Yes, we are intelligent in one fashion, though our actions sometimes belie that. But there are infinitely differing forms of intelligence too. Many of them are right at our feet. Many remain unnoticed by our supposedly intelligent gaze.

All I need to do to answer the intelligence question is to look at the genius of a single flower. How does it know to become that beautiful, from within the smaller genius of a seed or a bulb? By what process is that remarkable knowledge passed down? How has this been going on for as long or longer than humanity has been existent, without that brilliance being recognized as an intelligence equal to our own?

My own possibly intelligent belief is that we’ve defined intelligence too narrowly. Intelligence of intellect is one form, certainly. No other species than ours on this planet has had intelligence of the kind that can create space flight or symphonies, or understand quantum mechanics. But there are other kinds of intelligence, as well. Wild animals have an intelligence of presence, expressed in senses we can barely fathom. There is also an intelligence of soul, which many of us have felt even in pets we choose. There is an intelligence of growth as well, which all living beings must have in order to be able to grow. It’s an intelligence beyond mind; an intelligence apparently coded in every living being’s ability to expand from a seed. Plants have it, people have it, animals have it, perhaps even dividing cells.

Now, when I see a young girl running through a cultivated field of tulips, I see how deeply related the girl and flowers are, though that shared intelligence of growth. I see how our intelligence and that of the tulips collaboratively create vast fields of color neither species could grow alone. It’s an intelligence contained both within us and beyond us.

When I step back even more, I see our planet’s intelligence as a whole. I see that every grain of sand and water molecule is essential in that shared intelligence. We couldn’t exist without them. Thus I feel intelligence must also be contained within those supposedly mindless elements. I sense that intelligence is something far beyond mind, likely also beyond soul and spirit as we know it, yet infused and encoded within all of it.

My new question becomes opposite of the one asked by old astronomers and my young self. Is there anything except intelligent life in the universe? Isn’t intelligence what the entire universe inherently is?

I celebrate how clear my personal answer is. Yes, there is intelligent life everywhere. We don’t have to even glance at the sky to know the answer. We only have to open our eyes. To use our intelligence to see intelligence in everything. Intelligence is never more obvious or gorgeous than in spring.