7 Life Lessons From my Garden
Gardening season already came to an end for me. This year, unlike last year, was a bit challenging, and every day I left the garden with a new lesson learned!
7 Life Lessons from My Garden
- If you are in it to compete, when it's not a competition, you lose sight of the gift- My garden made this message so evident. Maintaining a garden is a beautiful thing, but it is very easy to get discouraged when you see that your plants are not growing and yet other people's are. But if you only focus on that, you miss out on the beautiful buds that are growing at their own time.
- Cherish things with the gift of time- I didn't plant anything "special" in my garden this year. As a matter of fact I had only a very few veggies because I wanted room to grow squash (another lesson ensued from that experience!) Yet, being in my garden and checking on my few plants was such a magical feeling, not because I had tons of crops to look forward to but because I was giving the plants and myself time. It was during that time that I got to enjoy moments of bliss.
- It's special because it's yours- It doesn't need to be better, it doesn't need to be different, it doesn't need something catchy. All it needs to be is yours. Nurse it with love and there you've created it: something very special.
- It's not always about you- Some of my vegetables were stolen--as a matter of fact, it was my squash that I had watched grow ever so slowly, the squash that I redesigned my garden for so that the plants had ample space to grow their fruit. I was livid and heartbroken that someone would think of doing such a thing. But what was worse was the fact that there were people less fortunate than I who felt they had stolen in order to eat. My initial feeling of anger and sadness was misdirected when I was looking at myself as the victim of what I had interpreted to be a cruel act of a malicious play. But in reality, it wasn't about me and how I was affected by theft, it was about someone else's greater misfortune: poverty and hunger. With that, I gave thanks for the abundance in my life.
- Don't get lost looking for people to trust- People have their own journey. Let them be and evolve at their pace. Just look for the honesty within yourself. At least you will always know where you stand.
- The more you try to control things the more resistant is the force against you- There were several times I caught myself trying to manicure my garden; moving vines here, tying them there, pulling branches this way, holding them up that way... I was going nuts trying to control how things were growing because I somehow thought that it needed my help. Well, the more I tried controlling my plants, the more resistant they became and the less fruit they produced. I caught on to their message and let them be wild and free. Trust me, they knew what was better for them. And they did phenomenally well when I let them be.
- Ebb and flow- And so this is life. As this was the pattern of my plants--even as I compared this year's crops to last year's I saw every so clearly how this is (in fact) the patterns of our entire life (cycle). We ebb and flow: we enter a phase of decline and then of regrowth. Patience, trust, and faith will get us through this motion gracefully.
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