Tending Gardens

Recently, I wrote about how negative experiences in life block us and hinder our growth in certain directions as we try to avoid pain and suffering (ok, I didn’t exactly express it that way, but I think it is the gist).

kwakersaur asked how I thought positive experiences affect growth and development.

I think we take positive experiences for granted – like good health. We don’t notice them because they are what we expect. Growing up (most people, I think) had positive experiences and consequently, believe that goodness is the norm rather than the exception. It is only after we have been pretty beat and downtrodden that we begin to notice them.

Positive experiences nourish and nurture us to grow without bounds, like a tree which stretches upward towards the sky. Some discipline may be necessary to ‘prune’ us so our direction is not ragged and unbounded - diverting our energies into the production of useful fruit.

I fundamentally believe in the goodness of people. Some have had hard lives and their souls show it. Like the ground it may be desolate and windswept, or choked with poisonous weeds, but I believe many are still fertile and rich capable of growing beautiful and delicate gardens. Some have been frozen and covered in snow, but as the snow melts it reveals a fertile land from which a beautiful garden may grow. We should take care of and nurture new and blossoming gardens, encouraging them from their winter’s solstice.

A tree unfettered by negative influences.

A tree distorted by the constant influence of wind.

Crocus' bursting forth in the early spring through the snow. Fragile and beautiful.

Images were taken from here, here, and here (and, consequently, are their property and not mine).