As the garden grows - A perspective on pain
Not wanting to encounter pain, we have developed a vast array of medications, addictions, and survival strategies. We view discomfort and struggle as bad things, to be avoided, and lives are arranged and judged by how well this is accomplished.
For pain and suffering are not comfortable or easy. And I don't intend to suggest we should celebrate or run off in search of pain. I have at times been broken physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Hurt doesn't even begin to describe the experience. Words are insufficient. But I don't need words because I know that you have felt hurt too. Life brings it. Pain is a common language of humanity. Be it a relationship ending, the shedding of assumptions and religion on our journey of understanding, or cracking your shin on a table in the night. We all know pain. It is a foundation of our experience. And I'd like to suggest that there is a better way to view pain then as an adversary to be avoided at all costs.
What if we view pain as a guide, a teacher? The path of knowledge?
What if it is the fertile soil of the garden of humanity in which we grow?
Soil and earth are not the garden full. They are the ground of potential.
So to, our world of pain and suffering in which we plant our lives, our choices, our relationships, our actions.
Fact: Shit makes us grow. And sometimes it really gets heaped on.
Everybody we look at is also a plot of earth growing based on the experiences and lessons they've encountered so far. Just like us they know pain. How can they not? We share this journey. And we can choose to help each others garden grow. A sweet community garden! With all sorts of different and wonderful plants; with hybrids and variants unimagined! How awesome is that?! Some gardens are pruned, some ordered, some chaotic, some with exotics, some with native species. All mixed and unique. Though some lay fallow and overgrown, all are beautiful with potential.
And as we tend our gardens with nurture and support we start to produce abundantly.
Some produce flowers gorgeous, or scents strong.
Some fruit or veggies.
Some create sturdy trees to dwell under, to ponder by, or to build tree forts in.
Some become grasses to weave, to watch dance in the breeze, lawns to lay on in the summer sun.
Such a diversity and wonder!
And all gardens have seasons. Times of planting and growing; harvest and rest.
We all share so much in common yet express it so differently. What a challenge. What an opportunity. What a strength.
We are gardens growing in the soil of possibility and potential.
What are each of us planting and growing?
What are we harvesting?
What season are we in at the moment?
Together we grow as we learn and live.
As our gardens grow may we find solace in the shade, fruit on our vines, and sprouts in our shit.
