Just Water the Plants: This Post Is not About Plants

 

I've always thought of myself as someone with a black thumb, despite my family's farmer roots, I feared I couldn't keep a single plant alive.

This was supported by my various attempts to keep plants in a pot and also when I had an actual garden. I basically employed a gardener so I wouldn't kill everything. 

Now I have a few plants in pots on my balcony and one day, I woke up (after three-fifths of them had died) and resolved that I would do better when it came to tending to them.

I put an alarm on my phone to remember to water my plants.

That was it.

Just water the plants. Regularly.

I didn't always follow through even with an alarm. But I did find that with watering going from zero times to maybe even once a week, I was reversing the rapid decline of my balcony garden. I went to Diani for one week and made my son promise to water them every day.

He did.

And the plants that were left were flourishing.

Let's backtrack a bit.

So life has been hard right? Internally and externally. Shit has just been hitting the fan so much lately. So much so that I've even seen fit to overlook my feud with 'God' and started well...praying. 

Do you experience God?

That's not an original quote from me. It's from Children of God by Maria Doria Russell. Or maybe it's The Sparrow. Father Emilio Sandoz asks his caretaker that question. 

It wasn't a happy thing for him - to experience God. Clair Fraser from Outlander also experienced God. She called it having a moment of Grace. 

I did too. 

For me, it's been different. Usually, I get these...moments of Grace...in times of extreme stress when I don't know how to proceed. They could come in terms of a revelation, or some person telling me something that answers a question I've been pondering. It's all very...existential.

Anyway, it had gone away for a few years but once I started praying well, it came back. I look at it this way, I opened myself up to the possibility of receiving these messages again and the universe resumed talking to me.

So there I was, seeing those seeds sprouting green and healthy and I went huh, all they needed was constant watering.

Maybe I don't have a black thumb. Maybe...I've just been neglectful in the past.

So I'm trying this new/old thing where I'm watering my plants.

Well...I am actually watering my plants and they thriving thank you very much. But it was also a metaphor for many other things in my life.

My son.

He's been having a hard time of it and I was at a loss as to how to help him or even if I should. Think Eagles and their babies - should I drop him out of the nest and just see if he'll fly or...what? And I worried that maybe I took it for granted that he would be okay, that he'd figure it out, that he didn't need me. Then I worried that I was being a helicopter parent and he'd never learn to stand on his own two feet if I was there to solve all his problems for him.

Parenting is super hard guys.

Water the plants.

So I tried to do that. To be present, available if he called upon me, to provide positive reinforcement and trust that he would do the rest. 

It's hard to trust guys. Phew. It's so hard.

But that's where I am with that.

It's a constant battle but we move. 

My health.

Being in my forties, I don't know if my health is deteriorating or if this is just normal wear and tear. Anyway, at the moment, I have very high inflammation in my body and still searching for a cause. I'm also trying to get rid of the excess weight in my belly. 

It's a frustrating journey for lil old inconsistent me. But I'm trying to be consistent in 'watering these plants' which means doing some sort of workout as many days of the week that I can. I use Justin Agustin's site which has very gentle exercises which don't make you feel like literally dying when you think about doing them.

A great side effect is that when my son finds me working out, it motivates him to go to the gym and achieve one of his own goals. Going back to being a parent; the exercises I do are very gentle, but the way he sees it is that I am effortless in doing difficult exercises. I'm just like..." When will that pedestal you put me on sometimes, develop feet of clay?"

It's great guys. It's great. wonderful. 

So I'm taking my meds, seeing the doc when I'm supposed to, and making sure to work out regularly. We await the results. 

Water your plants...consistently. 

I'm failing to do that with my work though. I can't seem to keep a deadline to save my life these days. Twitter is a huge culprit. I spend too much time on there. It's an addiction at this point. But I'm trying to use the Focus app on my laptop and just trying. 

Of course, I know there's more than Twitter to blame here. I might be burnt out. The worry about everything else in my life isn't helping. Neither is the less than optimum health. So I know that once I've gotten those other things nailed, my work output will improve and my bruxism will disappear. 

We hope.

Sometimes even when you water the plants consistently, birds come and eat them, or slugs, or they get a disease...life happens.

So do your part and then leave it all to...God? The Universe? Everything? Whatever higher power you believe in. Just make sure you leave it all on the floor, no regrets.

If the plant still dies, at least you know you did everything that you could.