Dear friend,
You’ve no-doubt changed in the years of your life. We all have.
Much like a garden, this version of me has taken years to develop and grow (and heavily prune). Just ask my wrinkles. But as Monty Don often says, a garden is not built in a day. The best of them are tended and cared for years. Trees, after all, need time to grow before they can cast shade and bear fruit.
As in comedy… timing is everything. And in reality, there is much that cannot be rushed about.
Sourdough.
Intimacy.
Maturity.
A friend of mine was once lamenting the attitudes and actions of her children, feeling quite defeated by their immaturity and rambunctious natures. An older mother listened patiently and nodded alone. “How old are your kids again?” the older woman asked. “7 and 9”, the younger mother replied. “Ahh. So you want them to act like they’re 18 and 20 instead of the ages they actually are.”, the older woman replied.
Mature children don’t happen before their time, and my 9 year old doesn’t need to act 19 quite yet thank-you-very-much. Though we may know this to be true, we resist it. We resist that ripening takes time, care, pruning, cultivation, and protection.
But I will not be rushed about by a culture that cannot see the value in ripening.
I threw handfuls of poppy seeds into the garden today. Bells of Ireland too. The teeny, round orbs — so small they almost looked like grains of sand — found their way onto the top of the winter soil (which, oddly, has yet to be covered by snow here).
To sow a seed is to hold onto hope. That spring will come. That someone will be here to see it blossom. That it will grow true. We hope in our labor, that the small seeds we tuck deep down into dark soil will someday reach upwards towards the sun and grant us great provision and harvest.
However…
The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit.
Rush, rush, rush, russsshhhhh, says the world. Overnight it. Expedite it. Buy it big. Build it quick. Multi-task. Habit-stack. Get it now.
But this isn’t how we ripen. It doesn’t work for nature and it won’t work for us.
Imagine the foolishness of asking young vines to bear grapes worthy of a Nero d’Avola. Or asking a baby in the womb to grow faster. They simply cannot. They need time.
Being a naturally introspective person, I cannot help but think of the many ways in which we, ourselves, must be allowed to ripen. Perhaps they resonate with you too:
Decades pass and only afterwards do we fully realize the work that has been taking place in all those ordinary days. So we dig large holes, plant trees, and look forward to a day in which we are able to pluck ripe fruit from their branches and cool ourselves in their shade.
But ripening of that fruit will take some time.
Love,
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