Memo from the Old Mans Garden  Renewal

I recently had a conversation with someone who told me “ I have discovered that I am exactly where I have put myself in life. If I don’t like where I am, then I have to decide to be somewhere different. Then I will be someone different”. Most of us are so caught up in the physicality of our lives that we do not realize that we have made all the choices that put us right where we are. We don’t like to assume responsibility for what or who we have become, perhaps because it is easier to believe that somehow everything just occurred by chance and is beyond our control. Even when we know it is possible for us to assume control, we hesitate because where we are seems safer than where we might be.

In the garden, plants do not have the luxury of bemoaning their fate or their placement in life. They grow where they are planted, they bloom in spite of adversity, and they demonstrate that life is both transient and beautiful. Their single minded purpose is to be whatever they can be.

If you look closely at trees, you can see ones that have bent where another tree has fallen and distorted their upward growth. They do not lay about concerned with how they have been stunted in their growth and espouse reasons why life is now ruined: they steadfastly continue to grow upward and onward. We too have this same ability to grow and overcome whatever obstacles have been placed in our way, but to do so we need to man up. We need to man up by being willing to look at ourselves and to become aware of what we are choosing and why. We are confronted time and time again with difficulties but these difficulties are gifts- the gifts of opportunity– we are given opportunity upon opportunity to choose again. It is only when we refuse to accept the challenge  to remain awake and aware of our choices that we become stunted and unable to grow.

Each moment we are someone new and if we do not like who we are becoming, we have only to change our minds and we can change ourselves. Others may not change but we can  be renewed/ We have the power to renew ourselves.  What in you needs to be renewed?  Your attitude, your sense of love, your heart, your compassion, your love of yourself, your outlook, your inlook? Like the plant, we are continuously unfolding, seeking to be the best of what we can be in spite of ourselves. Unlike the plant, we retain the option of choosing another way, another path to accentuate that growth. When the way we have come is not the way we want to continue, we can simply choose again. We can decide how we want to be as well as what we want to be. We can choose happiness, we can choose love, we can choose life. The choices are a limitless as the sands on the beaches. Each new choice renews our inner spirit and gives us a fresh breath of life and a new perspective.

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