Shamrocks – 10/7/11

The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing

It is odd how irrelevant occurances can make you look at your life and help you arrive at profound, deep understanding of yourself, your relationships and your life in general. These revelations are rarely major, life altering events but can help reiterate your choices, wants and needs.

For example, I kill every plant in my house. I even killed bamboo, more than once, which, I understand, is almost impossible to do. 5 years ago my ex told me that I was wasting money when I brought home a shamrock plant. He said that I was just going to kill it. For 5 years I kept that plant alive, just barely, out of spite because he had told me I couldn't. This plant has been on the brink of death many times and was never lush like the ones in the stores,  just 4 or 5 clovers, fighting to stay alive as I often neglected it.

When I came home today, I gave my shamrock a big drink of water and admired it as it stretched to reach the sun coming in the back door. It is beautiful, incredibly lush and thriving! It has been flowering, something it has rarely done in the last 5 years. There are new shoots beginning to grow and it looks amazing. I took the time and effort that this plant needed to make it thrive.

This made me realize that relationships and people are much like this plant. They need to be nurtured in order to thrive and grow. When you are not feeding the relationship what it needs, it will not grow, it will merely survive and eventually die. A relationship needs both people involved in the relationship to feed it just as the plant needs both sunshine and water. On our own, we need to nurture ourselves in order to reach our full potential. We need to be our own sunshine and surround ourselves with people to help water our potential!

While not awe inspiring, this thought made me realize how important it is to work through and on the tough stuff. I would like to think I will find a relationship that I can nurture and will nurture me in return, but until then and even after, I will continue to nurture and feed myself and my shamrock as we grow by leaps and bounds!