When you feel hopeless, start by focusing here.
I’ve never had a green thumb; in fact, I don’t have any plants in my house for fear that I’ll kill them. I’ve killed a cactus before.
But you know what I can grow?
What I seem to be a master of cultivating?
Weeds.
And not the pretty wildflower kind.
The ones you wish didn’t grow.
The weeds growing in my garden felt very symbolic of life today.
Without hard work, nothing grows, but weeds.
“If you rest too long, the weeds take the garden.” ― Jim Rohn.
But how long is too long?
There is only one month of summer left — or winter, depending on where in the world you are.
Where has the time gone? I feel like I’ve snapped my fingers, and our first month of 2021 is done and gone.
As I strolled along my usual Monday walk, I noticed how green the leaves were.
I noticed how the trees were flourishing.
How the air smelled of freshly cut grass, yet the grass was green and alive.
In Australia, in the summer, anyone who has been here for more than a minute knows this is rare.
It’s usually so hot and dry; everything is shades of olive, brown, black and grey; plants struggling for survival in the middle of the hot, long, dry summer, dying long, slow deaths. Starved by water shortages and burnt to death by the bright, shining yellow rays of the gorgeous sun.
My summertime walks are usually spent amid a dessert-like landscape and seas of brown, with clear blue skies that seem to never end.
But it hasn’t been one of those. It’s been one that reminds me of home, of New Zealand, of my family and friends, who I haven’t seen for well over a year.
I’m happy for the plants. I’m even glad for the weeds. But it feels sad for me.
It reminds me no matter what happens in the outside world; we can make it mean something which will make us feel happy,
Or make us feel sad.
It depends on what we choose to focus on.
It depends on what we make it mean.
The quest for happiness is eternal and fleeting.
Seemingly outside of our grasp to attain it and keep it.
Where focus goes —
Energy flows.
