Deadhead

I’ve recently gotten into gardening. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I do. Our last house had no garden or yard, only a pathway. I didn’t mind. Gardening! Yawn! Hassle! But when we moved we gained a small garden; small and manageable. I wasn’t going to like it anyway, so the less to do the better. I don’t have “green fingers” so all the plants would die anyway. But I’ve found it’s so much fun to see things you’ve planted grow up. It’s interesting to watch the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of life. There are so many different plants and flowers, and they (theoretically) need to be looked after differently.  

One thing that scared me was deadheading and pruning. I didn’t like the idea of removing dying flowers because I wanted to see their colour for as long as possible. What I didn’t realise was that removing dead flowers allows new ones to replace them! And pruning – but I might kill the plant! Pruning does many things like removing dead wood, shaping, encouraging growth. And I suppose if I did kill a plant I could just buy a new one….

You might think this post is about gardening making you happy. Well no, it’s not. It’s about deadheading and pruning in our lives. There are things which make us unhappy, yet strangely we don’t always want to get rid of them. I suggest we need to take a look at them and decide if we can deadhead or prune them out of our lives in order to encourage new growth or to give us time to replace them with something else we’d rather do. Hence – the happiness audit! This will seem to be a chore, but for one week only take a pen and some sheets of paper (if you still use such things) and each HOUR (yes, hour!) write down the MAIN thing you did in that hour; then on a scale of 1 to 10, rate how much sense of achievement you got and also how much you enjoyed it. This will be a good way to assess what you do and don’t like doing as you do it. It’ll give you a template to deadhead activities you don’t like to allow more time for things you do. A word of caution – be sensible. If you discover you hate washing up, you shouldn’t decide you’ll never do it again. Either find a way to enjoy it or buy a dishwasher! If you don’t like your job, don’t just walk away. Some things we just have to do. So see if there’s anything you don’t like doing that you don’t HAVE to do. Ditch it and try replacing it with something you’ve always wanted to try.

It may seem hard to give up things which don’t make us happy. It can hurt and create a feeling of emptiness. But allow something else to grow in its place and it will seem very worthwhile.

For example, I’ve stopped avidly watching news and political programmes (all doom, gloom and negativity) and now I do other things like writing poetry, playing my ukulele more often, writing blogs! Let’s sensibly prune off dead wood from our lives to allow fresh, new growth to come through.

Fifty Shades Of Green

Not so long ago we were driving through the countryside (I say, “we” – my wife was driving) and I took the opportunity to observe the scenery. One thing that struck me was how green everything was. Trees, fields, hills… Except it wasn’t green! It was greens! Not just one colour, green, but lots of shades of green! I must’ve noticed this before but it struck me like something new. Darker greens, lighter greens, in-between greens. Consciously observing, rather than casually observing, gave me a greater appreciation for what was right in front of my eyes and what should, really, have been blindingly obvious!

I wonder how much we miss out on in life. We look, but do we see? We taste, but do we savour? We touch, but do we feel? We hear, but do we listen? We smell, but do we…  um, smell?

If I’d been driving, I’d have been unable to appreciate the scenery. Even as a passenger, I may’ve been staring out of the window, lost in thoughts. But this time, for just part of the journey, I observed and appreciated, like a child grasping something as if for the first time and sensing a flash of joy at the discovery.

This is how life is. Sometimes we’re so preoccupied with something we lose the ability to appreciate anything else. We can be so focussed that we become blinkered. We’re so concentrating on what we’re doing it’s like there is nothing else.

Sometimes we’re living so much in our heads with our thoughts and our worries that we just don’t appreciate life anymore. We’re aware that life is happening to us but the trials of life (perceived or real) so dominate our thoughts that we live a kind of shadow life – one of our imagination rather than the real world. We’re in the passenger seat and being driven around by the spectre of fear and anxiety.

Sometimes we’re able to live mindfully, aware of what’s happening in us and around us. This will never happen by accident. We have to make ourselves do it. We have to decide to pay attention. We have to choose to live in the moment, seeing what’s there, being curious, observing, open to discovery. That’s what I chose to do that day while my wife was driving.

I’ve spent so much of my life in fear, worry and anxiety, which is like a grey fog, obscuring life, making me unable to see good things, afraid of what might be around the next corner, shrouding life in a monotonous haze. To see one shade of green is an achievement. To become aware of “fifty” is a bonus.

I’d encourage everyone to take time out each day to be aware. Become aware of what’s happening in your body, of the taste of food, of the feel of objects, of the sounds around you, of the sight in front of you. Become aware of the breath of life within you. Settle down and observe. When thoughts come to drag your mind away, just be aware of that and return to what you were observing. And every time your mind wanders, notice that and come back to what you were observing. You’ll gain a wider appreciation of things, noticing the different shades of life.