Grass does not strain to grow

Ginger and turmeric from our garden

I was chatting with a dear old friend yesterday, and he pointed out that he could feel I was "in resistance mode." In life coaching terms, it means that I am going against whatever good that flows.

I do get my moments. Sometimes, it's whole stretches of time. I could beat myself up over the time I've wasted--and I would too--but I need to shift, pronto.

Perhaps it's because I've turned 40. I'd never been one of those women who felt the need to hide their age. I thought I'd never really care about growing older--I know so many women 40 and above who just got even more amazing as they put on the years--and to some extent, I still don't, but I'm suddenly hit by this existential anxiety.

I keep wondering: Am I doing what I was meant to do? What verse do I contribute to this powerful play? Is there a point to all this? And if there isn't, why do I feel like I need to contribute nevertheless?

I still have no answers. But I don't want to overthink it anymore.

The other day, I went out to our small garden, overflowing with plants because of the rains, and I was reminded again that "grass does not strain to grow."

We'd planted some turmeric and ginger rhizomes a couple of months ago, and there they were, full-grown plants, bulging out of their pots. From a store-bought ginger that we planted because it had started to sprout, we now have a several ginger roots, waiting to be harvested.

I planted an additional two dozen or more turmeric rhizomes. They had been our harvest from a few months ago, and they'd just stayed in a basket, almost forgotten. One day, they decided to sprout.

I am not the world's best gardener, but gardening appeals to me because it reminds me all the time of how little effort--and by this, I mean resistance--there should be in what one does.

If the space is right, the plant will grow. That is all there is to it. That is all I need to know.

Why bother?

On a whim, I decided to tinker with this blog's template once again. I ended up not changing much, preferring the old look. I still think I have nothing much to say, but I consider it a sign that I came across this quote on Facebook.

 

A love story

This would've been okay as a tweet, but I prefer to put it here, on this day that perhaps someone else's beautiful love story has officially begun.

In Starbucks, a chatty little girl, maybe four, nags her mother. "Mommy, tell me a story. Tell me the happiest story. What's your happiest story?"

The mother says, "Look at daddy."

Goodbye; it was nice to know you

Looking through my old blog posts (the ones I've decided to keep) and scrolling down my Facebook timeline (as I debate whether to delete my account or not), I saw interactions with people I no longer interact with, either by choice or by chance.

I didn't even know then that that would be the last time I'd be interacting with them or posting about being with them.

It makes me feel sad, actually, how people come into your life and make you happy, and then you somehow hurt each other, and then all you have left is evidence that at one point in life, it was good between the two of you.

Still, it is what it is. I have these happy memories that don't make a monster out of me and a monster out of you.

Two (blogs) become one

I suppose it requires some amount of courage to face the failed parts of yourself. And then it takes even more courage to accept those parts.

This is my dramatic way of saying I've decided to merge my old blog with this relatively new one, partly because I am tired of searching for stuff I remember writing but feared I'd deleted and partly because I'm sick of hiding what feels like a dirty past but is really a dreary one.

There's a lot to clean up, like cryptic posts to lost loves, dead links, embedded flash videos, and announcements to my Multiply (+) friends. 

There's a lot that makes me cringe. The earliest posts date from 2007 and I was naive and (more) dramatic and had a (higher) tendency towards self-reflection and self-analysis-paralysis.

I want to kick myself for the many times I swore I'd finally finish my MFA throughout the years!

But I also regret many of the entries I lost, partly because I didn't back up my Multiply properly and partly because every so often I'd feel like erasing my life and the personal blog, started in the late 1990s, was always the first to go. 

Anyway, no promises, but here we are.