Learning To Be Where my Feet Are...
Hi friends. It’s a brisk morning in October, which basically means we’re almost at Thanksgiving, which basically means the year is over. 😂 (I can’t be the only one who thinks like that.) This time of the year is very…all over the place for me. Next month marks the anniversary of my father’s death, and I become even more introspective than I already am. I start wondering why I don’t have a home or a bigger apartment or why I’m not making more money or why I haven’t made someone’s 30 under 30 list (I’ve only got 9 months left) or why I don’t have abs and a dwindling waist or why fall is supposed to be the season of harvest and my life’s garden is seemingly disgustingly bare or why…
You see how exhausting that is? (Bonus points if you were able to read that last sentence out loud without losing your breath.)
I was on Twitter a few days ago and I saw a tweet along the lines of “learning to be where your feet are”. I’ll get to the point in a second (or a few…minutes, depending on how fast you read the rest of this.)
I work with a non-profit called The Regenerate Society , and we have a community garden in the works. I won’t go into all of the details about the life cycle of plants, but it’s obvious that nothing grows immediately after it’s planted. It’s a tedious and often frustrating process. It requires careful maintenance, pruning, and sometimes scrapping the entire plant and starting over. Some plants don’t yield anything for years. Despite the work that goes into gardening, I’ve also come to understand and even enjoy the process. What? Let me explain.
There is something deeply satisfying about watching something grow from seemingly nothing, into something great and tangible. Sure, at first it’s boring, because for a few weeks you’re just watering a seed. You know something is happening, but you can’t see it yet. Them boom, a few green sprouts peek out of the ground. Now we’re cooking with gas. You keep watering and cultivating the soil, and from those sprouts come, stems, leaves, and even a few flowers bloom. In the case of our okra, a beautiful flower would form just before the pods emerged. Tending the garden made me realize that every small step led to an even bigger step, and eventually a harvest. It made me slow down and take a look at where my feet were planted. I noticed things I hadn’t before, like the smell of the soil, or how pretty the pods looked right after watering them. I was learning to be where my feet were. Present, and in the moment. Before long, the garden went from a responsibility to something I actually enjoyed, all because I took the time to understand the process.
As a whole, we are so busy, ripping and running from one place to the next, one goal or accomplishment to the next, that we rarely stop and smell the flowers.
Or, when we do stop, we get anxious, frustrated, or fidgety, wondering when our life’s train will get to running again, because after all “I have things to do, and time is running out.” It’s during those stopping points where we need to learn to be where our feet are. Take a breath, relax your shoulders, and be in the moment. You may notice some pleasant things along the way.
So where are your feet? Even if you aren’t where you want to be, I bet if you look back you’ll see the footprints in the soil, which is evidence of how far you’ve come. Be present today. It’ll come in handy tomorrow.
Great things come from stillness, too.
Love always,
CDOG
P.S. Here is some of the harvest from this year.