TBT- Self Indulgent Ramblings And Abstract Metaphors

I wrote this on the plane ride of the first visit back home, almost seven years ago.  I found it recently and was please that my younger self had left such a good reminder of what to focus on as I pass farther along this path that lead me to the opposite side of the world and a place I never intended to call home.

Thanks younger me, I will try to make us both proud.

6/20/2010-

I am blessed with so much.  I hope my writings reiterate I am aware of it and grateful for it.

I feel I have done a halfway decent job of being kind to those around me and ever mindful that I can do better.

I do not pretend to know the future or to try to make it bend to what I think it should be.  Thinking you know and to try to torture what will be into what you expected it to be only servers to make one unhappy.

Life will rarely bend to our plans and that act of such purposeful manipulation only throws things out of the balance that that are in, needlessly and to serve a selfish desire to know the future- something that few if any can truly do.

I try only to be open, quietly listen to those around me and facilitate the happiness of others for it is in baring witness and having the opportunity to help others find joy that you will find the path to your own elation.

Enlightenment starts by creating a secret garden for yourself, a place where things grow and live as they are, aided by your work but not controlled by your effort.

A place where all things are let be as they want to be sometimes supported by our influence but only till the point when they can stand and bare fruit on their own.

Happiness lies not in the cultivation of this secret but in the day when you open it to others, allowing them to walk on your well trodden paths.  To smell the blooms that you have helped to grow, forgiving them as they impact the sanctity of this once private place in hopes that others may derive calm and find a quite place within themselves to plant a secret garden of their own.

As with most secrets good and bad, they can not remain secrets forever without loosing their significants entirely.  A life unshared is special and protected, without a doubt but it also lonely and without purpose.

Opening the garden gates allows too the opportunity to cultivate forgiveness, for those who do not know how to treat something so special to you.

Most of these trespasses arise from an ignorance of knowing how to create calm happy places for themselves because they only look outward for the entrance to their own garden.

For this we must forgive them for they do not know any different.  Reacting to hurt or injury; even purposeful injury with anger or retribution only doubles the problem and robs everyone of the opportunity for growth.

Just like the flowers and plants in the garden at times need structure or support to stand, freely giving your time to others severs as the foundation for everything to bear fruit.

I feel it important to emphasize that we can never be attached to our garden as something that is ours, to do so misses the point.  For it is not something to keep selfishly, it will only bloom for a while and then it like everything else will wilt and die leaving behind only small seeds that may one day become a garden of their own though you may never see it.

Everything passes on which is why it is so important to share all bounties selflessly with others however undeserving they may appear.  For you can not control nor should you try to control what will become of your garden or its seeds.

Treat it as an opportunity to unite and nourish those around you and your work will never have been in vain.

It’s funny, I wrote this when we still lived on the seacoast, years away from the little  homestead were we have grown our little garden.  I think that is the core of why I write.  It is simply an effort to record the changes of life as they happen so that I can look back and remember how I felt in that moment.  In this way I rededicate myself to efforts that will take a lifetime to hone.

I have made a little progress down this lofty path (now often covered in snow) but I am please to find such a potent reminder of my youthful intentions.  Even years farther down my way; the description is still familiar, I still know where I am and where I hope to go.

And I am very grateful for it.

Be well!