Start where you are (My Sacred Life, Sunday)

In our backyard this time of year, we have quite a few containers, all different shapes and sizes, of pansies. It's my wife's way of jump-starting the backyard garden: get a few dozen Hardy Boy pansies even before the snow stops falling, and spread them around the various gardens in the back so that all the plants only starting to awaken have a good example they can follow. Wake up and bloom, everybody!

This year, a week or so ago, I noticed that we had a volunteer pansy, the first one we have seen after about eight or nine springs with pansies in pots in the backyard.

Not only did this little plant volunteer, it seems to be quite happy in its little spot, cuddled up against the edge of the concrete patio. Today, we noticed that it now has two blossoms. A few days ago, it only had one. So, it is doing nicely.

Here is what the success of this plant has taught me: don't waste time and energy bemoaning your fate. Instead, start where you are.

That pansy ended up trapped against a concrete slab as it started to grow, and it didn't hesitate to grow there anyway. That's where it was, so that's where it started. No issues around how sloppy its parents had been, or what a crappy school system it was forced to endure, or how hard it was to be growing up in such a tough neighborhood.

Given the complete lack of pansy support groups, I guess you might conclude that pansies are so well-adjusted that they are miles ahead of us, the human race. And, in a way, I have to agree.

Pansies know exactly why there are here--regardless of where "here" happens to be--and they get about their business. People, on the other hand, spend so much of their lives living out the regret over what they could have done, if only. For most of us, there are lots and lots of different "if only" topics, too. Or, we worry about what will come next week, unless. Yep...lots of fear-based nasty consequences to just being alive, aren't there? It's really not a wise investment, that energy devoted to worrying about what might happen in the future.

What if, instead, we awoke one morning and simply got about our business? If we had ambitions toward some dream, we would take concrete steps, however small they might be, toward living it. If we were unhappy with our employment situation, we would calmly decide what to do about it, and do it. If we knew we were in a relationship which was toxic, or there is a potential one which we know would be great but the other person isn't yet on board with the whole idea, we would end, or seek to begin, a relationship.

Notice: no fretting, complaining, sighing over lost opportunities, or otherwise trapping our focus anywhere but right here. None. We are here now. This is where we start, not in the past when we were somewhere else. That ship has sailed, and now we can only change what takes place with us in a starring role from this moment on. We need not worry about what might happen because we are too busy making the future real, one day at a time, to worry about the outcome.

That pansy has me convinced that I, too, can be a pansy volunteer and start right where I am right now, and simply move in the direction which will best serve me, starting now.
I'm already feeling good about how this is going to turn out, although I am not quite ready yet to start a movement which would include lapel buttons: PANSY VOLUNTEER. Maybe after the phrase gains some traction first...