~Thoughts on The Garden~

 Written April 16th 2013

 I am absurdly busy with scholarships, class work and a test tomorrow and have been since class started up again. I thought you might appreciate a post so I found this little reflection from last spring. This is very much a personal and honest look into my mind, take it for what you will but take it with kindness.

I miss waking in the early morning cool with the birds. I love the taste of warm milky tea from a pottery cup and the feel of cool damp earth under my feet. I miss the soft whispering of the plants and re-settling of the pigeons. I miss it as, I must imagine, an amputee misses a limb. 

It’s this bitter sweet memory of a much loved and missed time in my life. And now I find my self continually asking, will I find my way back to that?  If not, what good is anything I am doing now? Was that not the goal? 

A conversation I had with a fellow science student has helped me clarify my stance. She said “ I am so glad there are people who want to research cancer so I don’t have to do that research, and that there are people who want to get into sustainable agriculture, like you, so I don’t feel guilty about not doing it.”
 There are many things I am good at and many people who expect great things from me in every direction. I do not want to do all those things. There are some I will do for a while but eventually the garden will call me back and I will not delay returning any longer. I am simply afraid that I will wonder down a path that I cannot, for reasons of loyalty, return from again. I am painfully aware that one of these paths I see as a diversion may actually be the faster way back to my garden. I cannot simply refuse to divert from the well trodden road because of fear; what kind of a life would that be? If that amputee had the chance to take their limb back, would they? 

I must admit, my horizons, my final destination has changed or rather, grown.  There are things I had not considered important, meaningful or possible that now are important. But I still don’t value them over the feel of damp earth; at least I believe I don’t. Will that be true when I return?  Will I miss what I have now more? 

No, I will not. I have not been that happy since; there have been measures of happiness. But without the garden growing perennially there will always be a place in me that the happiness cannot reach.

I don’t know how people live with no connection to nature. No growing plants they commune with or animals they are indebted to. What value would life hold, How would you measure happiness or wealth? Yes, you may have other people but a life filled with just the acts and creations of Homo sapiens is a dark lonely and often cruel place. 

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