Beginnings

After I finished setting up this blog, I realised that I use alot of gardening analogies. It’s not something I think about, but it clearly resonates with me at a deeper level.

I was pondering on how daunting beginnings can be. How they are often mired in uncertainty, the fear of the unknown, pain. We don’t quite know what to expect, all we can do is plan, execute and hope for the best outcomes.

In most instances, we have had time to gather all the information, ideas and resources we need to help us make a start. Other times, we don’t have the luxury of planning. We are simply reacting to events that we have little control over.

Job losses, illness, bereavement, separation, are all major events that affect us deeply. And which result in us starting again. Whether that be in a new place, or in the same place without people we love.

Positive things also lead us to make changes that lead to starting afresh. A job promotion. Winning the lottery (when we remember to play of course), recovering from an illness. A new baby, or four.

And so as I was walking around looking at my plants – I do that a lot. I talk to them too. They are perfect listeners. They do not talk back, make judgements or tell my secrets (not that I have many) – I noticed a nasturtium that was dying off. It had been attacked by aphids, the sun had proven too hot and I had not given it enough water.

I plucked it out of the pot it was in. I was about to throw it in the heap for the compost bin, but as I passed by a pot just inside the door, I made a hole and stuck it in. It had two chances.

After a few days, I noticed what looked like a tiny, smaller than a pinhead, green shoot. I couldn’t be sure. A few days later, it was longer. Stringy, longer, reaching out and up, almost as if it couldn’t believe it had been given another chance.

It thus struck me how daunting new beginnings can be. How it can feel like we have been uprooted and plonked right in the middle of a place so dark, we can barely see a way through.

How even positive things can shake us up. A new job, bringing in more money, just like the cool watered rich soil of the indoor pot, but with increased expectations and responsibilities.

And as simplistic as this comparison is, there is a comfort that despite how difficult things seem, no matter how hard the going is, if we can find the strength, even just to hold on, to hang on in there, we might find that our feet eventually anchor, and we begin to grow, and thrive.

And if in the midst of it all, that we have hands that reach in and hold us down, people that feed us, that listen, and shelter us when the sun gets too strong, till that pinhead of hope grows into a blooming of triumph. Until the next beginning.