September 10, 2005
-
Patience
When I was a kid, my mom allotted me a small chunk of land in my parents’ large kitchen garden, on which I could grow whatever I wanted– sunflowers eight feet tall, carrots, radishes, peas, purple beans and other interesting stuff. I was perhaps five, when this tradition started– and it taught me patience, and about how the things we start yesterday may not show up immediately– neither today, nor tomorrow…. but instead much later. In the beginning, I didn’t have a great deal of understanding of this, and would impatiently pull up the carrot seedlings to see if anything was “there.” On finding nothing, I’d stuff the tiny plants back in the ground, only to watch them wither and die. Evenually, I did get the message that things will grow– even while you’re not looking– and harvest time will come.
It took me a few years to figure out what to grow, as well. At first, I just wanted whatever grew large, and quickly. Or things that were “easy” to grow. Only after a number of trial-and-error attempts did I figure out that what gave me the most pleasure was to plant the things I really liked, and which I enjoyed harvesting, for any number of reasons. In retrospect, I understand now that this was perhaps one of my first lessons in listening to my soul, rather than the clamoring voice soup around me.
I often think of that little patch of land, as I wander through the changes in my life, because it seems like such an appropriate metaphor for how we deal with our personal growth processes, as human beings. So many people in the world– and especially at the countless workshops and retreats I have been to– desperately want change. But such change is much like the plants I cultivated in that garden. Just because we know that we want something to be different from the way it is now doesn’t mean that it will “just happen.” The realization that we want to “change” something– our living quarters, a friendship, our work situation, our relationship, our marriage– is little more than the seed, and harvest time is still a way off. Yet, most of us approach the process of change like impetuous 8-year olds– later often giving up on making changes happen, because what we want doesn’t quickly appear before us.
I wrote recently that a “harvest time” is approaching, in my life. As I contemplate what lies ahead, I am once again having to remind myself to “be patient.” There are…. “things”…. unfolding around me, and within me, that fill me with that intense curiosity and desire to pull up the “tiny carrots,” just so see if “we are there, yet.” But I also know that it is not time. And with that knowledge, another realization quietly presented itself: “Maybe I have become an adult.” Not in the chronological, or biological sense, but on a “soul” level. I am not entirely sure what that means, but it seems to have to do with recognizing the difference between “setting goals and making plans” and letting them come to fruition in their own time, and trying to achieve those goals by “forcing them to happen.”
How have you dealt with the seasons of change, in your life?
Comments (6)
Even Harvest is a long drawn out process, and growing up or becoming an adult never fully happens, does it? I still feel like a child at times, but thankfully not so often like an adolescent… heh.
I have watched the way you’ve approached this move; methodically going about this business of change. And I marvel at the sanity of it because it is exactly the opposite tact I take. I plunge into a move backasswards. So this time I am going to attempt to do it more your way.
I have entered into life ordeals over which I had no control; things that took time like divorce, buying and selling houses, cancer therapy; so I have learned the art of waiting. And I guess I’ve decided that with those big changes it’s probably best that we have some flex time, to get our new bearings. I’m a huge procrastinater and it’s only the change of season which has allerted me to the urgency of, for example, rebuilding the deck. Now that’s something I should have done by now but I was too busy enjoying it.
So while I regret not doing things in a timely fashion, I will still manage to get the work done on time, one way or the other, and how can you regret a wonderful summer?
It happens in spite of us, not because of us.
Having a chief feature of impatience, which has gotten me into more trouble than any other one thing on this earth, I can SOOOO relate to this. I want it all and I want it RIGHT NOW. Impatience and greed – my interchangeable middle names. 
T
An appropriate metaphore for dealing with personal growth processes it is… I have come to realize that changes rarely ever happen overnight, and when it would seem that they do, it’s because I fail that the growing process that preceded the change has been going on a lot longer before the results became noticeable. What you have told here about the carrots is to me reminiscent of a parable of a child who wanted to speed up the process of a butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis; the child breathed upon the chrysalis and speeded up the metamorphosis, but when the butterfly emerged sooner than Nature had planned, it’s wings were underdeveloped… I think we all have an aspect of the impatient child who wants to see results and wants them now, but Nature or Life, has a time table of it’s own that is not to be tampered with. To have faith that, in due time, our seeds will grow, is an act of growth in itself, and an ongoing practice in the art of living. Too often, I’m still the impatient child, but I’m learning.
Hah, change. I admittedly abhor it as a cat does to water. But then all I can do is just sigh, hold my nose and take a deep breath then let myself plunge into it.
I don’t usually let myself change, or if I do I would just wake up and get the realization that I wasn’t who I was before. For better or for worse, I’m not that sure yet. Ask me again when I wake up ^_^
YOU’VE BEEN HIT BY THE
|^^^^^^^^^^^^|
|BEAUTIFUL TRUCK | ‘|”"”;.., ___.
|_…_…______===|= _|__|…, ] |
“(@ )’(@ )”"”"*|(@ )(@ )*****(@
Once you’ve been hit, you have to hit 8 beautiful people. If you get hit again, you’ll know you’re really beautiful. If you break the chain, you’ll still be beautiful in my eyes. Hit whoever you think is BEAUTIFUL!