Gardening
I was listening to a podcast this
week that dealt with gardening, but not of the conventional kind. It was more
of ‘the garden of your mind’ kind of gardening.
During the agriculture class, we
learnt about soil types. Some were dense, others were too spacious, others were
just between.
Clay soil is good for growing
cabbages and broccoli; loam soil is good for carrots and beets; sandy soil is
good for root vegetables such as turnips. Each soil type has certain qualities
that make it more suitable for some crops and not others.
Just like garden soil, so is the soil
in the garden of our minds. No two minds are the same and that is a function of
many factors as well as the cultivation methods we employ.
The best agricultural method for
the garden of your mind is regenerative agriculture. How are you improving the
soil of your mind garden? Do you challenge your mind with new concepts? Have
you learned something new recently? How well do you retain information? What’s
the quality of your memory? What about diversity? Are you only good for
conversations about the weather, politics and football?
And why do I need to cultivate my
mind anyway?
Because if you’re not growing,
you’re dying! Any fruit grows to maturity, then on to ripening and after it’s
been picked, it stays ripe for a while then starts rotting and eventually
becomes manure for the next crop. Our minds behave the same – growth, maturity,
decline, death – unless we work at interrupting the process just as we are
about to get to maturity.
Some of the cultivation methods
we could use on the garden of our minds include reading, listening, watching
and interacting, with the right sources.
The right book can save you years
of extremely expensive experience if you read about another person’s pitfalls
and avoid making the same mistakes. Now we have ‘youtubers’ and podcasters that
add to the list of teachers out there who can educate you on the go, mostly for
free. There is now hardly any skill you would want to learn for which there is
no online video teacher either for free or at a fee. Container gardening,
baking, crocheting, plumbing, even swimming! There is a video out there showing
you how to do anything you want to learn. And you don’t have to walk up to a
person to interact with them now – social media has taken down those
boundaries.
There are so many voices
clamouring for your eyes and ears daily. Radio, TV, bill boards, online and
print advertisers, social media influencers, strangers on social media. . .the
list is endless. All these voices are doing their absolute best to be in your
face 24-7-365 that it sometimes gets hard to hear yourself.
I make decisions about what I will
expose myself to and what is absolutely forbidden, long before I have to deal with
it. These were not easy decisions to make but once I was clear about my values
and what can compromise them, it made sense to walk away from things that will
not support the soil of my mind garden.
So this week, look for new voices
to feed your mind on. Find new music, different books, new podcasts, meet ‘differently’
new people and really listen to their otherness, find something you’ve never
done before and look online for a ‘how-to’ video and actually spend time
learning. Observe your discomfort or excitement at that process and find ways
to either overcome or recreate it. Get comfortable with turning the soil of
your mind every so often. Just like soil, your mind also needs some airing,
some challenging, some jolting. It expands your horizons and keeps you firm and
tasty, not mushy and overripe. Happy gardening!
“Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds.” ~ William Wordsworth
We are living in an epic mind gardening era...everything is at our fingertips...literally.
ReplyDeleteWisdom and discretion is all that is needed.
So many "farmers" out there aiming at scattering all manner of seeds on the garden of my mind and I have to be careful & intentional on who I give access to my garden.
ReplyDelete