Cultivating Our Own Garden Where Truth Blooms

Hmmm, should we think
more and listen less in this perplexing time of information overload?

One of the advantages of
blogging is the window it affords me to look back and reflect. In the spirit of
hindsight, and looking for context to make sense of this unsettling year, I
looked back three years to my mid-summer posts.

Three years ago, I was
in the hospital suffering the misery of a twisted
colon and preparing for surgery. Three and a half weeks later, recuperating
at home, I wrote about Knockdown
Fastballs – The Myth of Invincibility Deconstructed:

We
are gifted in our youth with the belief that we are invincible – possessed of a
preternatural ability to dodge the numerous knockdown fastballs that life
throws at us as an inevitable consequence of living. This belief is, of course,
an illusion. The natural laws of life eventually catch up with us and claim
their pound of flesh.

So,
with due humility, I confess: I am not invincible or immune. Nor am I a
superhero with special powers of overnight recovery. Where the world of
metaphor meets the real feet-on-the-ground world, knockdown fastballs have my
number and I cannot always evade them. It is a sobering reality.

On
the plus side, I learned many valuable lessons from this unpleasant experience.
I have emerged on the other side a bit wiser and with a more realistic outlook
on life.

Two years ago, I wrote
about The 200 Million Year Wisdom of the
Turtle:

Turtles are
traditionally seen as the embodiment of the notion that slow and steady wins
the race. But they also remind us of the wisdom of taking life as it comes.
They do not react to and resist the forces around them, but rather simply
accept what is and move on with their life with fortitude and tolerance.

A Painted
Turtle regarding me with is prehistoric countenance and nonjudgmental attitude
– a random act of metaphor to remind me that wisdom is born of patience and
that contentment comes from taking life one day at a time

One year back, I reflected
on The Life Fully Lived: Colouring
Outside the Lines:

As
we mature and grow into adulthood, we learn that there are rules to the game of
life and often penalties for noncompliance. We develop an inner voice of reason
that warns us when we are treading close to the line and steers us back onto
the acceptable path.

But
part of maturing is recognizing that a life fully lived occasionally means
breaking the rules. Some of life’s special moments happen when we step outside
the lines.

Life
has rules for valid reasons. Most often the best course of action is to follow
them. But now and then, life calls us to break the rules, leave the beaten path
and go where we are not supposed to go. It is often when, exercising our best
judgment, we colour outside the lines that we experience those memorable
moments that make life truly worth living.

The common theme in these
posts is wisdom – how it is sometimes painfully earned, often arises from
unexpected sources and occasionally calls upon us to break the rules. I came
across an African proverb which elegantly summarizes these truths:

Knowledge
is like a garden, if it cannot be cultivated, it cannot be harvested.

In a year when life has
been turned upside down and it is hard to separate fact from fiction, we should
chose to cultivate our own garden – nurturing the flowers and yanking out the
weeds.

~  Now Available Online
from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of
Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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