Life Is Like A Garden

Life Is Like A Garden...
I hope everyone had a great weekend, and enjoyed their Friday off… This weekend I was out and about and almost everywhere I went people were planting their gardens. I started thinking how like a garden creating our lives actually is. When you think about it, the first step to planting your garden is to decide what you want to grow and how much of it. Just like life, the seeds we choose represent goals that we set, what we want the end outcome to be.

The second and most important step to gardening is clearing away the existing growth, No one could grow a thing if they simply put seeds on top of the ground, very quickly the grass and weeds would overpower young vulnerable seedlings.

Just like life, when we start to want or need change the very first thing we have to do is remove the existing growth, get rid of any and all things that might threaten the healthy growth of your garden.

Most people do this by tilling the garden area, turning everything under and then you rake over the garden to get any existing roots that might be left behind, and get them out of the way otherwise they take root and grow again, resulting once again in the possibility that they may affect the healthy growth of your garden.

It is impossible to get them all, I don’t garden anymore but I used to have a huge garden every year, then my kids grew up got married, and have gardens of their own so I have an abundant supply of anything I might grow without the intensive care that a garden requires. So you’re going to rake back over the garden to remove as much opportunity for bad to take root and grow as you can.

A lot like life what would be left behind is a memory of what was there…that we choose not to allow to continue to exist.

After you have tilled and raked your garden you decide what you want to grow where, doing this is like visualizing the end outcome in your creation process. Typically you visualize what needs the most care, what space is required, and lay out your garden accordingly.

One thing that always amazed me is the fact that if you plant the hot peppers beside the sweet peppers, the sweet peppers become hot, why don’t the hot peppers become sweet. In comparison is that like the power struggle between positive and negative thoughts, do the hot peppers represent the presence of negativity in your garden, and the more you tend to and fertilize that negativity it continues to grow and thrive, and can pollute your garden? I think so. Planting the hot peppers one row away from the sweet peppers will completely eliminate the chance of this happening, so in the garden of your life, separate the negativity and keep it far from all that should grow to be sweet.

You have to fertilize your garden, just like goals, things you want to change, you have to feed your plants what they need to grow and thrive.

Gardening is very labor intensive. When I was a kid I used to laugh at my Dad when every night after supper he would take hoe in hand and go “check” the garden , like life at that age, I thought the garden would just grow…check what for crying out loud, the seeds are planted shouldn't they just grow?
The truth is they will do just that, those seeds will sprout and they will indeed grow but…so will all the other stuff left behind when we tilled the garden, as sure as the seeds will grow when left unchecked, and unattended to so the weeds will grow as well…

In your garden you have three choices the first and worst choice being to allow the weeds to grow, which would be like allowing negativity to exist in the garden of your life when in the end you want the outcome to show the fruits of your labor, with a bountiful harvest. By taking this approach the garden will quickly become overrun by the existence of the weeds, which we fertilized when we planted the seeds in our garden and your fruit will perish, you can wade through the weeds and you will harvest virtually nothing in the end. The amount of time and energy invested in choosing your seeds, or setting your goals will provide you nothing in the end.
The second choice would be to occasionally hoe your garden, what happens in this case is that you have to work much harder on the occasions that you tend your plantings, because the weeds are more plentiful and require more effort to remove. In the end your garden will struggle to survive against the presence of weeds, or negativity, your garden will bear fruit, but it will be sparse, and fall short of the desired outcome. By allowing yourself to loose sight of your goals,and only tend to them occasionally your goals struggle to thrive, success can come but it will be much more difficult getting there.

The best choice of course would be to check the garden. Checking your garden everyday will give you the opportunity to maintain a space free of weeds and harmful growth because you will be able to remove it as it occurs, while it’s young and weak. Long before it takes firm root and begins to grow rapidly. Checking your garden everyday and removing anything that might be harmful to the growing environment will result in a clean growing space, much less labor intensive, with a much more bountiful harvest, in the end the garden you envisioned will emerge, thriving and healthy, and will bare all the fruit of your labor.

Checking your garden, would be much the same as taking daily inventory in our lives, never allowing negativity to take root, and affect the goals we set for ourselves or to slow the process of achieving these goals. By doing this the end result will be exactly as we imagined it to be, success will be plentiful, and your garden will bare fruit in abundance.

In my opinion there was never a more perfect time to choose your seeds, remove the weeds, plant your garden, and check it daily…Decide what you want, clear your mind of negativity, set your goals, and work towards them everyday.