Wednesday, June 26, 2024

It goes, and it grows....

 June 26, 2024


Mostly, I’m completely okay with the fact that I am a constantly evolving human being. No, that’s not a euphemism for getting older. I don’t need to pretty up the fact that I am indeed getting older. Generally speaking, most people believe that getting older is better than the alternative. And it is—but only in the present moment. But that is a topic for another essay.

No, I am evolving in ways that have brought me to rethink a few things that I had considered to be solid fact. And in a few cases, I am not ashamed to admit that I have had to tweak my understanding to be a bit less rigid, and a bit more accepting. We are all of us different from each other in a lot of small, and perhaps defining ways. But we are more alike and have more in common than we sometimes want to admit.

I used to say, and proudly, “it’s not that I don’t suffer fools gladly. It’s that I don’t suffer them at all.”

I understand now that that thought is too rigid for the person I am evolving into. One needs to accept that fools abound, and most of the time, not only do they not know they are fools, but they also truly can’t help the fact that they are.

The biggest step in my evolution at first made me sad, when I understood it had happened. But now, I recognize that this realization is enormously freeing.

I used to believe that if one’s reasoning was sound enough, and cogent enough, one could successfully get others to see the errors of their ways.

And now I understand that no amount of persuasion, however sound, logical, or right will ever convince some people that the thing they hold as truth really isn’t truth at all.

People will realize that someone they believe in isn’t worth their faith, or they will not. They will come to see that they’ve taken the wrong fork in the road, or they will not.  And I know now that where the change needed to happen was not in other people, no, not at all.

The change that needed to happen was in me. I needed to understand that what others eventually do or don’t do really is none of my business. And it’s not my job. I don’t have to bear any responsibility for the asinine thinking of others.

Wow, what a relief!

It means that I no longer bear the weight of a responsibility that was not mine to begin with when it comes to how those around me behave. And it also means that what other people think of me has no power over me whatsoever.

Love me or hate me, it’s all okay as far as I’m concerned. The important justification is how I feel about myself. It doesn’t matter if you live your life the way I would approve, or vice-versa. It only matters that I live my life in accordance with my own moral compass.

It probably took me longer than it should have to come to this point, this epiphanous moment, but that’s okay, too.

You’ll be pleased to know that our table gardens appear to be faring well. Do you recall that I, at the request of my husband, bought some green-bean seeds online? Well, they seem to be thriving. And I guess I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, because a few of them are vine-plants as opposed to bush plants. A quick trip to the dollar store to purchase a decorative trellis has, hopefully solved the issue. We might end up using strings to help them further. We’ll just have to wait and see.

As well, those beans are flowering like crazy, as are our tomatoes. We’re getting a good amount of rain, so that watering those table gardens isn’t an every-night necessity. The last and final part of the process that will guarantee a good yield this year is completely out of our hands—which kind of ties in nicely to my thoughts above.

But it being out of our hands doesn’t mean we are powerless. No, even as I write this, I am praying for bees.

Lots of geminating bees.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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