Watering Our Seeds
I recently started developing a relationship with the soil and the plant world, thanks to our small home garden. I noticed how some seeds were able to withstand the weather, and sprout out despite the strong winds or the pests feeding on them, while some, gave way. There is resilience in everything..in seeds too..and perhaps plants learn resilience as they grow. What we are endowed with at the time of birth is not what it is about…it is how we respond to things around us that enables us to thrive or wither before our time.
While talking to an old friend the other day, I was listening to her share her poignantly disempowering narrative of how she had been unable to establish herself in her business even though people around her seemed to be flourishing. Coming from a place of dejection and pain, she was finding it tough to cope with her dismay at her perceived lack of success. It became clear to me how we humans, not having spent much time internalizing the workings of nature, tend to expect things to unfold at the pace of light, whereas everything really is meant to unfold in its own ‘divine’ timing. We might have been disconnected from the real nature of things and sometimes keep the expectation of reaping a harvest of apples from a fig tree. The idea of marking students in examinations, conducting appraisals in corporates and even the act of interviewing people for jobs might well be like trying to sow a seed and yelling at it ~ ‘grow, grow, grow, come on, grow into a lemon tree!’; without allowing it its own time for germination, for learning how to cope with the wind, the sun, the rain and the soil, without appreciating its own qualities and most importantly, without honoring the ‘divine’ timing of things. What if some of those seeds we have been yelling at were meant to grow into a rare species of orange trees? By constantly pushing all kinds of seeds to grow into the same kind of lemon trees that we desire for furthering our purpose, might we have contributed to the limiting of their growth, distorted their multifold being and done them an irreversible disservice?
Are we doing this to people around us, unknowingly? Can you see how this might have been done to you at some stage in life by some unsuspecting, innocent, process conforming, high performing, well wishing acquaintance?
Can you now see why watering our seeds is not about really about the act of watering our seeds as much as it is about a universal connection ~ starting with first acknowledging the unique nature of our seeds, fostering a connection with them, getting to appreciate them for what they are and from that point, tuning into to what they need to become the best version of themselves?
Isn’t everything really about permaculture and permaculture, about everything?
