Planting Seeds

There's nothing passive about an Unforced Garden Life. Learn how to be proactive about creating a life that is truly suited to you.

Transcript:

The Unforced Garden Life is in no way passive. Instead, as you have the energy and the inspiration and the motivation, you gamely plant seeds for new good things in your life. The thing is, you have to be absolutely fine with it if many of these seeds don’t end up working out. A good thing - the thing that suits you well - comes easily, is fun, and leads to your greater well-being. Just as some seeds are well-adapted to a particular garden spot, with its particular context of sun, soil type, and moisture, opportunities are adapted to certain types of personalities and situations.

In an Unforced Garden Life, your job is to welcome the seeds of opportunity that thrive and to gracefully release the seeds that didn’t do well. You don’t want to spend untoward amounts of time nurturing a seed that produces an opportunity that is hard to tend, unenjoyable, and causes you stress, overwhelm, depression, or insecurity - or worse physical health.

And this has to be regardless of how attractive and pleasing the seed may seem on its packaging, or how the opportunity may present itself on paper.  For example, I love sunflowers, and according to the back of the seed packet, a sunflower would do well in my garden. But even though I’ve planted hundreds of sunflower seeds, I’ve only ever had two sprout. It’s disappointing, and it should have worked - I followed the directions. There should have been dozens of sunflowers out there. But no; they didn’t work out in my garden’s particular context.  But the thing is, even though sunflowers didn’t work out, California poppies sure worked out, along with roses, grape vines, artichokes, and borage. My garden looks great. And it doesn’t take much work at all.

The same goes for opportunities outside of the garden.  For example, you may want to spend your retirement backpacking along the major trails: the Pacific Crest Trail, for example, or the Appalachian Trail.  You practice by hiking a lot, camping a lot, and learning how to pack well for a backpacking trip. You love your two-week backpacking excursions. You dream of backpacking almost permanently, living away from the suburbs, building community with the other hikers along the trail, and spending your days walking in nature, soaking in beauty and sleeping soundly in your tent at night.

But when the time comes, after your first two weeks of backpacking, the whole thing starts to feel difficult. You realize that you’re not good at it. You’re so stressed that you can’t enjoy it. And the physical toll the constant exercise is placing on your body hurts your joints. You come down sick with a fever. And after a while, all you want to do is leave the trail and go rent an apartment near a donut shop.

In an Unforced Garden Life, you would give yourself permission to ease off on your extreme hiking lifestyle. Perhaps you’ll rent an apartment near a trailhead, and hike only a few days a week, instead of all of them.  Perhaps you’ll couch surf your way across the nation, exploring the nation’s trails along the way. In any event, you can stop an all or nothing approach, use a little less time and effort with regard to backpacking, and explore something else. You might enjoy volunteering at a library, or writing a novel, or taking up gardening, or working on a cruise ship. Or you could plant a seed for each of these ideas, seeing how each one works for you.

And when things sprout that are fun, easy, effortless, and for which you have an aptitude and an affinity, focus on those things. Tend those things. Enjoy the new good things that emerge because of them.  And if you need more in your life, plant more seeds.

So here’s your homework for this week: choose a single seed to plant - launch a new activity or change an activity to use a new method. See how it works out. Note if it’s a good fit for an Unforced Garden Life. If it is, tend it. If it isn’t, let it go and plant another seed. Repeat.

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