It’s a noisy world. Our windows of perception are limited by time and ability to focus, and what clamors above all else one moment may be gone the next.

Your work, your message, your whole being may wait in line for a long time to get any real attention if you don’t optimize, promote, and target your way to the fickle mic and make sure your amp is on while you’re up there.

Yet, if you keep on keepin’ on, keep showing up every day because what you are doing has value and you believe in it even without regular affirmation, you start to shape your surroundings and become part of the “constant.” And that takes its own brand of strength—one that, in our alpha cheerleader culture, can get overlooked.

To round it out with a cliché: just like the moon (a round object, for argument’s sake), it doesn’t impose upon you but it’s there in the night sky whenever it occurs to you to look.

This reminder ties in neatly with my recent foray into floaty white florals. I’m not usually a white-floral fragrance wearer, as I lean toward fruity rose fragrances (it’s good to have figured that out), but I wanted to try something different from my sample collection.

White Gold by Ormonde Jayne and Un Jardin sur la Lagune by Hermès both have an assertive but not arrogant infusion of white flower (jasmine in the former, magnolia and pittisporum in the latter), perceptibly boosted by a floralizing aromachemical, that stays close all day—a hovering olfactory companion that’s never obnoxious but also constantly reassures me that it’s still there. They don’t change much throughout the day, blending softly into their white musks and woods.

A cozy cuddle that doesn’t turn into a squeeze.

A quiet strength.

[My sample of White Gold was part of a discovery kit I purchased, and I got my sample of Un Jardin sur la Lagune rather randomly at Nordstrom. White Gold seems to retain its gauzy sheen a bit better; the luminosity of Lagune fractures toward the end of the day into sparkle dust.]