Don’t let your rocks smother your growth
Yesterday my dad and I finally finished one of our landscaping projects: laying rocks in our raised flower bed. The process for the task was open bags, pour rocks, then spread until no dirt could be seen.
As I was spreading the rocks, I noticed that some of the leaves of our plants were being crushed and covered. As soon as I noticed this, I made sure that the rocks were only covering the dirt and not the plants that we wanted to grow.
Although not intentional, the rocks we were placing had caused some harm and could have led to some serious problems if we hadn’t noticed and corrected the issue.
This led me to the thought of how good intentions/endeavors can have a negative effect if we are not careful.
In this day and age, we are bombarded with the challenge and expectation to start new goals and habits to improve ourselves: exercising more, getting a promotion, taking up a new hobby, etc. Now this in it of itself isn’t a bad thing. The only danger is that they can potentially get in the way of some other good pursuits in our lives.
Take Long the dragon from the movie “Wish Dragon”. To give some context, this movie is basically a modern-day version of “Aladdin”, but instead of a Genie in a lamp, there’s a dragon in a teapot.
Long was a Chinese Emperor who grew up believing that “…gold is power.”.
Now wanting wealth or success is not entirely bad, but unfortunately for Long, he took it to the extreme. He desired these goals so much that he sacrificed his relationships with his family and his people which caused him to be locked out of the “Spirit World”.
Just like I needed to make sure that the rocks were placed in a way that covered only the dirt without hurting the plants, we need to make sure that any of our pursuits don’t ruin any of our already existing good habits or relationships. (Kind of like how my blog writing has gotten in the way of my normal sleep routine.)
Take away: Don’t let something good hurt something great.
