“I’m choosing happiness
over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up
my life with yet-to-come surprises.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
The above
quote came to me one day as I was restlessly flipping through Facebook looking
for something to inspire me to some sort of productivity. It jumped off the
screen and caught me squarely between the eyes. So, of course, I had to find a
gardening analogy to fit the quote.
As I have
been sitting here beneath several feet of snow that seems to keep replenishing
itself the minute so much as an inch melts, I have been warding off the winter
blues by making plans for my brand spanking new garden. One of the things that
I have to take into consideration when laying this plan out on paper is to
remember to leave room for the unknown. What I mean by this is that since this
is my first year gardening in this spot, I have no way of knowing how well some
plants will do as opposed to others, which ones will pretty much fill the space
where they’re planted and which ones will take over way more room than I had
anticipated. Sometimes that is a good thing, and sometimes it overtakes other
plants and chokes them out. Then there is the drainage and runoff of the piece
of ground I’m working with which will affect whether the plants get enough water
or hold too much water and create root rot. As much time as we put into gardening, in the
end it is really nothing more than a crap shoot, having faith that what is
supposed to grow will grow, and what is not, won’t, and along the way knowing
that surprises await us that we could never have imagined. Like the time I once
pulled up some well-established grass in order to dig a new garden bed only to
discover a beautiful vine that had been struggling to come up through the sod
where it had been seeded over by a previous gardener.
No matter
how well we think we have planned our lives, we always need to leave room for
the unknown. How dull life would be if we didn’t allow room in our lives for
surprises, those unexpected occurrences that tap us on the head and remind us
that the magic is in the unknown, the unexpected. Instead of weighing ourselves
down with schedules and to-do lists, or worrying about what “might” happen, why
not leave a nice, big space for the unknown. It is never too late to
incorporate a little adventure into our lives, a little spark of creativity and
childlike belief. Even if the unexpected turns out to be something that
threatens to overgrow your space and choke your roots, you can always pull it
out and make space for something new. That’s how you choose happiness over
suffering, by making space for the unexpected, yet-to-come surprises in our
lives.
So what are
you going to choose?
And so it
is.
