Now is a time to think about cultivation, what will we plant in our gardens this year? How will we prepare? When do we start?
A garden is a commitment, just as a seed is hope. It requires fortitude, persistence, adaptation, resilience, and, of course, patience. Some would say luck, too, is a key ingredient. Maybe most of all, our gardens require love.
My family moved to Easton four years ago, enamored by its quaint and relaxed feel, an unlikely trait in Fairfield County. Lower kinetic energy was how I described it, life over lust possibly, though never entirely. Of course, we were drawn by its farms and inspired so to grow our own. We built raised beds and planted a bramble and a half dozen fruit trees we hoped would benefit from our neighbors’ bees. Some things worked, others did not, and the animals always get more than we do. As much as is lost, a fresh berry in late summer makes it all worthwhile. Trial and error, with not enough time as is required, but learning all the way. And, of course, time spent with our hands in the soil and our face in the herbs, and seeing the plethora of pollinators pepper the lavender garden and our wild lawn makes it a cherished experience: real life. Maybe we’ll get more serious soon, when the kids are a bit older, add the canopy and spend more time to maximize our bounty. It is our garden after all.
But this is not the garden I am talking about today. The garden we must tend is the one inside. And this garden, too, requires love.
We are an amalgam of our experiences, a complex computer and houseplant at once, and it should be no surprise that our inputs dictate our outputs. With so much strife in the world, so much orchestrated (and well-funded) divisiveness, with so many bad role models it is all too easy to consume a mountain of soul food junk. Stuff that tears us down, feeds our anger, builds confusion, and makes us sick.
While we can’t, and shouldn’t ignore, the bad actors of the world, and try to hold them to account, we must first ensure we help ourselves and have a program in place to strengthen the garden within. Our mindfulness practice, and practice of love is fundamental here.
We can learn from our physical gardening too, which is an act of presence. Hard work pays of in and of itself but is no guarantee. Quality takes time. We can just be. You can taste, feel, even see the love. In fact, love as a response to all is a key tenet of most philosophy throughout time.
The Stoics stressed love as a reasoned response and acceptance, support for the virtues of others and to wish them well. Love was not, to them, a passionate and spontaneous response but a well calculated design aimed at improving oneself and the world around them.
Sadhguru stressed that love is a quality and not an emotion yet love and joy are intertwined. Love is freeing and liberating oneself from attachment and must be practiced. Sounds like gardening to me ….
Thich Nhat Hanh, too, emphasized the continuous practice required of love and he said that mindfulness, presence, was a requirement. Listen deeply and be aware, recognize all things are connected. Do you see how your plants thrive when you spend more time with them? Spending more time in the present is no different. Love is healing, Thich said, for us, for others, for our real and metaphorical gardens.
And love of the world is important too, to be enamored by the splendor and daily miracles that surround us, and, returning to the Stoics, accept our fate. Amor Fati, love of fate, love what comes your way. Sometimes the harvest is a bust, but each day is an opportunity to plant a new seed.
Through this practice and recognition of the importance of love your garden grows strong. It bears succulent fruits of joy and ripe vines of hope and resilience. The strength to do what’s right and live in a state of gratitude. A friend remarked to me the other day how humankind destroying the planet had brought her to tears. I told her this:
Revel in the beauty of the world. It is fleeting either way, but you saw it.
Be good to yourself,
-Ken
The Cultural Easton 