On gardening, blooming where you're planted, and what to do when you rather do any else than try to make it work where you are. Read on to find out more.
Prefer to listen? Click below:
“Like wildflowers; You must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.”
– E.V.
This is always the time of year I start to think about my life as a garden, or rather I start to think of gardening as a metaphor for life.
Probably, because this is the time of year when I become a gardener again, thrown into the fire of bringing life back into the very real garden right outside my door.
Warming weather in the U.S. means it’s time to get
started this party started.
The thing is gardening brings up a lot of my stuff. It’s rife with metaphor.
And if there’s one thing that haunts me when it comes to garden metaphors (and if you’ve spent any time here at all you probably already know it) — you can find last years rant about it here) — it’s that old chestnut of blooming where you’re planted.
Oh, how I despise this! How I resist it the very notion of it... How I feel my lips curling in contempt at just the thought of enthusiastically forcing myself to bloom where I’m planted.
Each year I use this little quote to help me enthusiastically
weed my own garden.
I like to pluck the little suckers out while muttering about the wretchedness of it all. And it’s with a grim kind of joy that I note, that the weeds at least, won’t be blooming where *they* were planted.
The truth is I’m somewhere in my life where I never wanted to be — both physically and well metaphorically too.
After many venues to foreign lands and big cities, I’m back to the place where I was born.
But more than that I’m single. Again, and still. My chosen career is fledgling. I’m back to just beginning.
And in my own mind I’m far too old to be in the beginner’s
stage. Far too old to be back here.
After decades of imagining that my future self would bloom somewhere better, brighter, and more fortuitous — a transplant if you will — It hasn’t quite happened like that *yet.* But hope springs eternal.
So, you can see why I resent the implications that somehow I should just be content to be here, and get busy blooming.
And yet, it’s the places in my life that I have most resisted gardening in, that have most resisted blooming in return for me. Gardening in real life teaches you that nothing comes for free. And blooming requires a certain willingness to get your hands dirty and do the work.
Resistance doesn’t just lead to deadlock, it leads to inertia, to land that lays fallow, full of latent, but as yet, unseen potential. And so do dreams and ambitions that we aren’t willing to do the work on, just because we aren’t exactly where we wanted to be.
But surrendering to the places that feel most fated, or rather, mostly ill-fated, and resignedly working the land, is hardly a palatable alternative.
And if you ask me, we aren’t meant to surrender to our fates
or our gardens.
The answer is to find the sweet spot between where you are and where you want to go. That requires a certain acceptance of things the way they are now. But acceptance isn’t resignation or surrender.
Acceptance, unlike resignation, is the beginning of the process, not the ending of it.
You know, there’s another quote I’ve found recently:
“Bloom where you are planted and
sow where you are fed.”
― Stella Payton
It is the second part of this quote that interests me most: Sow where you are fed. What feeds you? What excites you? What most entices, seduces and moves you into action without any apparent effort?
Where you joy, is where you are best led.
The actions that inevitably lead us closer to where we want to go, where we’d like to bloom, always look like fun and joy. They are irresistible, impossible to resist, because they feed our soul. It's like Debbie says:
“You want roses? Live unrestricted and love like crazy - that is how the wildflowers bloom all around us, even in the darkest winter.”
― Debbie Lynn
It isn’t force, in the end, that gets anything to bloom. It’s love.
And fun. We can’t leave out the fun.
That’s as true for us, as it is for roses, or wildflowers or anything else you want to flourish.
Find what you love, even here, in this version of your life, whether you love it, or hate it, whether it’s the Garden of Eden, or a real shit show.
Find what calls to you. Find what makes you roar with laughter. Find the fun. The pleasure in this moment. What moves you like magic, and follow it.
I can’t guarantee you it will lead you to where you expected to go, joy can, after all, lead you to some funny & unexpected places.
But, what I can say for certain, is it will be wild and breathtaking, and it will be fun. And that’s not so bad, is it?
Because as Lady Bird knows:
"Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
― Lady Bird Johnson
Much love all,
And happy gardening!
Desirée Sommer
Desirée Sommer is a former Interior Designer, and a current Writer/Speaker who helps people just like you Style, Beautify and make their lives Fun again!
She happily resides in the rural beauty of Idaho with her pet pooch Bree, where she gets to take epic hikes, and plot her next big adventure/road trip/travel destination.
Oh and before you go. I have a gift for you!
Get your absolutely FREE guide:
"55 Simple Pleasures to Wake up your Ordinary Days."
I'm getting a lot of great feedback from people on it, and I want to make sure you have a chance to grab your copy before it's gone! Get it here!
Can’t get enough? Need more? I like your style! Here are some other articles you might enjoy:
If you’d like to write in a question for coaching feel free to message me on Facebook or email me at info@desireesommer.com.
A treatise on gardening and what to do whenng and what to do whenng and what to do wheng and what to do whng and what to do wng and what to do ng and what to dong and what to dng and what to ng and what tong and what tng and what ng and whatng and whang and whng and wng and ng andng anng ang ngnto hit that like button, and sign up for blog so you never miss another post about being happy, and pursuing your dreams.i