Dear Jessica Brennan,
Recently I was gardening – the garden being a great place for reflection – and my thoughts drifted, as they do, to how a petunia functions. Nature shows us its lessons sometimes just when we need them.
Many of us buy petunias early in the season with their beautiful vibrant flowers and well-constructed green foliage. They brighten up our landscape by bringing instant summer to our homes.
But then what happens?
Petunias need their dead flowers pulled out of the sockets of the plant or they won’t flower again. This is true of a lot of plants and trees. The dead has to be pulled out, or cut off in order for them to flourish. They regularly need a good pruning to keep them on track.
If you don’t remove the dead ends, petunias particularly, will duck and weave and try to thrive. They will grow long, weak, limp tentacles reaching to nowhere with brown, dried up pieces of what used to be flowers on the ends.
This is also true in our own lives. If we ignore what’s dead and not working, we cannot flower. We have to cut out what has died in order for new things to grow. Otherwise, on our journey, we will extend spindly almost broken paths from one thing to the next, but we won’t shine. We will make weak arguments, try to stay busy, work hard on being numb and use any method to identify with that dead piece of what used to be a flower dangling on the end of our washed out life.
Why?
Fear.
Fear can be good. Fear can be paralyzing. Fear can be useful. Fear can be bad. But however it is showing up, call it what it is. Fear. Fear of a lot of things, but mostly fear of change.
If you pull off what’s dead from the picture of your life, then what changes? What is the price you must pay to flower? Will it cost you some people you have hanging around? Will you have a loss of income? Does your social status change, or will it mean you are alone?
Maybe anesthetized conformity is actually the best option. I mean it is popular and abundant. There is a never-ending supply of it.
Change is what scares us all, and we negotiate with life to avoid it, but at what cost?
Eliminating what is dead on a plant allows it to flourish and be healthy. It can then put down a solid root system rather than using its resources to ward off pests.
Pests. Sound familiar?
What’s dead in your life? What’s dead in mine? What has been dead for years? What never was alive in the first place? What needs to change? What pests need to be removed?
If we don’t cut off what’s dead, our lives become spindly, directionless, lazy, redundant, numbing and unhealthy. We cannot flower.
If, like most petunias – (perennials that are native to Argentina) – we are not at all in the right place, we may limp our way to being a blooming annual, but we will never be vibrant perennials.
The fact is, just like the petunia, we are here for one reason.
To flower.
Love Mum xo
