Anemones

The other day I had a revelation while weeding my garden. It seems comical, I know, and I am sure others have had this revelation, but it really crystallized for me in a moment. As I worked to pull the gangly weeds and thistles growing up against the fence, I was muttering to myself about how no amount of work and preplanning can prevent them from emerging. It was maddening, that I somehow could not even control this tiny patch of soil. All the preplanning, fresh soil, pesticides and labour, did not effectively present the outcome I wanted. In thinking about this, I realized, it is a lesson these past several years that has forced the entire world, willing or not, to learn: there is very little we can control.

If there is something I will clutch and preserve from these strange pandemic days, is the realization that in the before-time, I lived within an illusion of control. I believed my actions, planning, thinking, and care were actually capable of affecting things. I feel like all the media I consumed as a child, all the rhetoric I was fed by education, all the encouragement and support of the people I love and care for, have focused on this idea that we are all unique and that “one” is powerful — and I now feel that in many respects, this is a lie. I realize this is a harsh and almost nihilistic statement, but to frame it more clearly — I feel I have lived with a belief that I have more power than I effectively do.

Now to be clear, I have not abandoned my will and wonder for living, on the contrary, it has grown stronger. Yet this frustration with the weeds is really the same frustrations I have with the world, the pandemic, the structures and machinations of society, aging, illness, love, governments, etc. This alone time has shown me how we exist as part of a massive machine of life, passengers on a ship that is so large that it is effectively impossible to turn around unless many (if not all) of us develop the intent to do it — and even then we fail. Over the course of the pandemic, I have watched the people we have granted extraordinary powers, try to steer the ship in one way or another and even they, in many respects, are powerless.

These observations and revelations have been humbling, but freeing as well. It has lifted away a pressure I have applied to myself for most of my life, believing I was somehow failing, because despite all my effort, the control was not there. So how does this all relate to Anemones?

I had seen these beautiful flowers and had always wanted to grow them. But that pressure to control, that fear of failure had kept me from trying. It seemed awfully complicated to plant bulbs, to gamble on whether the hard frosts were over, or to start them indoors but maybe not chill them enough into producing blooms. Amidst the frayed chaos of our upturned lives, I suddenly thought, already on my path to my realization: who am I to think I can ‘make’ Anemones grow? All I can do is plant them, the rest is up to the Anemones.

So in the darker, colder and lonelier months of winter, I ordered anemone bulbs. For months I watered the little pots, transplanted sprouts into larger containers — I put no pressure on myself or the anemones. Either they were going to bloom or they wouldn't. And then one sunny morning, I was deadheading the petunias in the front yard containers and there was my first Anemone. They came through for me.

And thus, Anemones have become for me, a sort of reminder to let go. It is important to do what I must to keep living, but I have freed myself of the pressure of trying to shape life into something I have planned or imagined it would be. It is organic and interconnected and too big to effectively steer. Life and living is a fascinating chain of experiences, but in so many ways, what it will be, has nothing to do with me.

Originally published at https://www.hannepearcephotography.ca on August 25, 2021.