Poppies

Photo by Liz Birnbaum, The Curated Feast

Sleep well, my pretties.

I’ve been feeling under the weather and sleeping a lot the last couple days! (Like 10 hours per night. Dear body, please reset!) With all this sleep, I have imagined I am Dorothy sleeping in the red poppy fields before the great city of Oz, except these poppies are the orange California ones. I have also been thinking about one very powerful story I know about poppies — and the first opium war.

The first opium war was sparked by an open letter from Qing Dynasty scholar Lin Zexu to Queen Victoria. He asked her to end the illegal opium trade because China was providing Britain with valuable commodities (tea, porcelain, spices, silk), and that Britain was sending only poison in return.

He beautifully wrote: “I am told that in your own country opium smoking is forbidden under severe penalties. This means that you are aware of how harmful it is. […]

So long as you do not take it yourselves, but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own lives, but careless of the lives of other people, indifferent in your greed for gain to the harm you do to others.”

So I love the poppy for this association: it is connected to asserting what is right! What does this story make you think of? And what do you want to assert for your week ahead?