Being here

I have been so occupied with the general business of living that I find I have not taken time to simply sit and reflect on life. Such reflection is, I think, necessary and beneficial: when we become too caught up in our days and the events, significant and seemingly insignificant, which comprise them perspective can become lost--we can become lost, or perhaps feel a sense of incompleteness, that we are not progressing as we ought. This is why we must have goals, or at least why I believe I must continually set, evaluate, and reset goals in my own life, because without the feeling that I am working towards something I am inclined to feel adrift, and such a feeling of existing without stasis or anchor is where in the past I have gotten myself into trouble. Could it be, miracle of miracles, that I am learning from my own mistakes?

I think too, in learning, in growing as a person and as an adult, that it is important for myself that I articulate a lesson learned: it is not enough to me that in some silent way I acknowledge progress as I have been apt to do in days now gone, but now to stop, to take a moment and say, quite literally "this is point 'A', this is point 'B'", or, "this is choice 'A', this is choice 'B'", and what course I have chosen. I find that when I do this, at least for myself, I then experience a sense of fulfillment, of completion, and am then justified in telling myself "well done, you", rather than existing in a state wherein no self-discipline exists. There is always work to be done.

And with that in mind, I turn my attention to the garden, my garden, where I spend the greatest amount of my time when I am not occupied with work or the day to day activities and obligations that keep us busy individuals: it is there that I go to work, hidden underneath a planter's hat and behind polarized sunglasses to protect against the harmful rays of the sun and with the earphones to my iPhone snugly in place, music playing. I'm able to lose myself in the work and in the music, and I wonder to myself how I spent my afternoons and evenings before I was so devoted to this art. The pressures of work go, the vagaries of events past diminish, and with the eye of a child in an adult's mind, I clip and prune and plan and plant and tend. I know who I am when I am in the garden.