Planting What's Possible

It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But, as I’ve come to understand that life ‘composts’ and ‘seeds’ us as autumn does the earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the most difficult of times. 

~Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old

When my children were young and I was a new homeowner with a big backyard, one of my favorite things to do was to purchase wildflower seeds. My children and I would rake the soil, then scatter the seeds. I was not a particularly adept gardener. I left Mother Nature in charge. But I could picture it in my mind – an English garden, filled with pinks and yellows and whites and blues. 

Each spring, I would see what popped up. It rarely looked like my imaginings. But it was nonetheless lovely. Sparser than I'd hoped. Some flowers looked a bit like weeds. (Which, as Winnie the Pooh famously said, "are flowers too, once you get to know them.") From what popped up, I could fill in some holes, I could cut back what grew too enthusiastically. I could patiently create what I wanted. 

I'm not, of course, suggesting that infidelity is like a flower garden. More like a dark alley strewn with used condoms and infected needles and vomit. 

But look closer. Is that a flower pushing through that crack in the pavement?

When your life seems as though it's lying shattered at your feet, it can feel impossible to believe that, within these ruins, are seeds that will grow into something new. Indeed, one of the laments of those who arrive at the doors of this club none of us wanted to join, is "I want my old life back. I want my old me back."

It's a feeling I know well. I felt it too. I wailed as well for my life in ruins. I couldn't have conceived that anything at all positive could grow from shards.

So I don't really expect you to believe me when I tell you that it is. It will. That even as you read this, your head shaking in denial, your heart broken permanently you're certain, something positive might be taking root.

But there's a catch. You need to plant that something positive. It might be a new-found commitment to learning to value yourself. It might be learning to set clearer boundaries. It might be the removal of toxic people in your life, a refusal to tolerate cruelty. It might be that you seek out therapy and excavate some of that old pain and trauma.

And it might not – in fact, I can almost guarantee it will not – be easy.

Mother Nature can't entirely take care of this one. 

But you can.

You can prune and weed your life. You can sow and plant. You can seek out loveliness, making sure to spread it yourself. 

Being betrayed brought me to my knees. And while I was there, I realized something. My pain wasn't special. It wasn't anything that millions of others weren't also experiencing, for any number of reasons. And it made me realize something else. I could choose cynicism or I could choose courage.

You have that same choice. And it is a choice. We can't change what happened to us but we can absolutely choose how we respond to it, what seeds we plant in the ruins, what possibility takes root.

You and I both know which one will bloom more beautifully.