The other day, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, we were talking about love and in movies, stories, fairy tales it is told as this hero’s journey, love as the prize, as something we fight and strive for, just to attain it. But what happens when you reach “happily ever after?” How does the life of love, the ups and downs, the peaks and valleys flow, grow and thrive?
It takes all this work to get to love, and oftentimes we struggle to understand why, after all that work, it doesn’t work out. Why love continues to take the shape of relationships that came before and, often, that was modeled for us.
Love is a greater concept and at the root is an action. I’ve come to view Love like tending a garden. Oftentimes you see neighbors in their garden in spring; winter is just shaking off, the sun is warmer, the earth has softened. People are planting. Visits to the nursery, the chosen flowers and plants begin to decorate the yards of what is wanted to be seen in their gardens. It’s made to look nice.
As the year deepens, you see the neighbors that go into their garden daily and tend to it. Prune what needs to be cut, what’s dying or is dead, and nurture what’s growing. You see their garden flourish and become stable. Some garden enthusiasts introduce bugs, turn the soil often, even make their own compost.
The neighbors that did all that work in the spring and slowly (or quickly) reduced the amount of time they tended to their garden due to time, work, being busy, spring comes again and they’ve got a mess to clean. And then they do it again (look for love, clean themselves up again), plant new plants and flowers, and then let their cycle repeat, or they don’t.
The neighbors that don’t tend their gardens buy new, they make pretty and then they leave it as if a garden could be there and tend to itself. Not saying that Mother Earth can’t do that, but when we do the choosing, do all these plants create an ecosystem, are we introducing worms, lady bugs, etc.? Are we creating ecosystems of love? Is love an ecosystem?
What about gardeners? 🤔
Symbolically, I think we can view gardeners as routine maintenance, like weekly date nights. I’ve noticed though, that sometimes, with routine maintenance, the grass may lose that vibrancy, or the plants may not produce as many flowers or look as full.
I look back at my relationships (not just romantic) and see where I failed to tend to the garden and as they say, the road is two-ways (Usually. One-way? 😂). Now, that I’ve grown, I see the importance of roots (foundation), the soil (environment), water and soil (sustenance, nurture), pruning (cutting away what’s not needed or necessary). Recently, my hand at gardening has been just talking to my plants and water, they are thriving with just that bit of attention.
Look within yourself and your relationships. Maybe we all need to show up to tend to our gardens.
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