Have you ever had an overwhelming sense of failure accompanied by a chorus of taunts from between your ears? That miserable sucker has been trying to visit me ever since early spring. I love to garden and have been fairly successful with my growing efforts in the past but I have met my match this year. A beautiful topiary pine we planted two years ago in the flower bed died this year. It failed to make it through the winter because I failed to water it in well and care for it in the spring once the ground thawed. The specimen is taller than me with a sturdy trunk. I don't have a hope of getting it out of the ground on my own. And so, every time I arrive at home I see a big dead thing in the middle of my flower bed that screams loser. Yes it is possible for a dead tree in a flower bed to become an animate object with a voice if one has a good imagination.
There are a few possible reactions when we encounter the voice of failure. We can rally our energy and courage, throw up the white flag in agreement, or avoid and hope the voice settles down soon. My initial response was to avoid. Life was busy, I'd get to the flower bed soon enough. I could close my eyes when I drove into the garage as long as I did it really slowly - the driving part I mean - and then I wouldn't even see the dead tree. That approach was fraught with plenty of opportunities for disaster, all of which fortunately did not occur.
While I was avoiding, something else began to happen. The weeds took hold, then the dog began digging. What had started as one sorry looking dead tree quickly became an entire flowerbed of misery. You know how that goes. If you have one part of life running out of control there are probably other parts jockeying for position in the race to full loser status.
I tried looking the other way when I drove into the yard. The square foot garden was on my left and It had been a source of joy in other years. I thought if I was just patient the seeds would germinate, the tomatoes would grow, and I could experience some relief from the loser voice hollering in my head about the flowerbed.
Alas, only a handful of the hundreds of carrot seeds I planted germinated. The radishes looked okay, so I hung onto hope until the radishes suddenly bolted and began to flower. Then the quack grass showed up where carrots should have been. Suddenly it didn't matter which way I looked when I approached the driveway, failure surrounded me. I threw up the surrender flag and considered briefly taking the rototiller to everything and starting over again. But I'm very uncomfortable with giving up, so I had to find another option.
Rallying my energy and courage, I stared down the misery of my gardening failure, put on my gardening gloves, and began pulling weeds. I could deal with the weeds. They were within my control if I just paced myself and didn't expect to have the whole mess cleaned up in one afternoon. I could pull them faster than they could grow. I could win the battle, begin to reclaim my flowerbed and start to push the mute button on the failure voice echoing in my thoughts. So I did. I started yesterday and gave myself a reasonable target of how much I could deal with in one weed pulling session without killing myself.
Reaching the goal only took half an hour and I felt freer almost immediately. I was surprised. It was just a flowerbed, it wasn't a big life crisis. But somehow I had allowed all the other voices to join the failure race and I wasn't even making it difficult for them. I had become embarrassed by the publicness of my gardening failure. You know the voice that says, "Hey, loser you can't even keep up with your weeds how are you going to do ...?"
I realized this was real life and it was okay. I needed to put out a sign declaring, "There's nothing here to see, move along." It was time to serve notice to all those voices of failure. They were not welcome here anymore. The weeds would get dealt with bit by bit. The dead tree would eventually be dug out for me and replaced with something else. I concede this year of vegetable gardening was a bust and I'm moving on. Spring will come again next year and I'll try again.
Failure only becomes a permanent condition if we give up. Today, I will come and go with my eyes open and I will yell, "There's nothing to see here, move along."
I will chase the failure voices away with energy and courage. I hope you do too, because you have so much to offer the world. Whatever your weedy garden is, don't let failure get you down or keep you down.
There are a few possible reactions when we encounter the voice of failure. We can rally our energy and courage, throw up the white flag in agreement, or avoid and hope the voice settles down soon. My initial response was to avoid. Life was busy, I'd get to the flower bed soon enough. I could close my eyes when I drove into the garage as long as I did it really slowly - the driving part I mean - and then I wouldn't even see the dead tree. That approach was fraught with plenty of opportunities for disaster, all of which fortunately did not occur.
While I was avoiding, something else began to happen. The weeds took hold, then the dog began digging. What had started as one sorry looking dead tree quickly became an entire flowerbed of misery. You know how that goes. If you have one part of life running out of control there are probably other parts jockeying for position in the race to full loser status.
I tried looking the other way when I drove into the yard. The square foot garden was on my left and It had been a source of joy in other years. I thought if I was just patient the seeds would germinate, the tomatoes would grow, and I could experience some relief from the loser voice hollering in my head about the flowerbed.
Alas, only a handful of the hundreds of carrot seeds I planted germinated. The radishes looked okay, so I hung onto hope until the radishes suddenly bolted and began to flower. Then the quack grass showed up where carrots should have been. Suddenly it didn't matter which way I looked when I approached the driveway, failure surrounded me. I threw up the surrender flag and considered briefly taking the rototiller to everything and starting over again. But I'm very uncomfortable with giving up, so I had to find another option.
Rallying my energy and courage, I stared down the misery of my gardening failure, put on my gardening gloves, and began pulling weeds. I could deal with the weeds. They were within my control if I just paced myself and didn't expect to have the whole mess cleaned up in one afternoon. I could pull them faster than they could grow. I could win the battle, begin to reclaim my flowerbed and start to push the mute button on the failure voice echoing in my thoughts. So I did. I started yesterday and gave myself a reasonable target of how much I could deal with in one weed pulling session without killing myself.
Reaching the goal only took half an hour and I felt freer almost immediately. I was surprised. It was just a flowerbed, it wasn't a big life crisis. But somehow I had allowed all the other voices to join the failure race and I wasn't even making it difficult for them. I had become embarrassed by the publicness of my gardening failure. You know the voice that says, "Hey, loser you can't even keep up with your weeds how are you going to do ...?"
I realized this was real life and it was okay. I needed to put out a sign declaring, "There's nothing here to see, move along." It was time to serve notice to all those voices of failure. They were not welcome here anymore. The weeds would get dealt with bit by bit. The dead tree would eventually be dug out for me and replaced with something else. I concede this year of vegetable gardening was a bust and I'm moving on. Spring will come again next year and I'll try again.
Failure only becomes a permanent condition if we give up. Today, I will come and go with my eyes open and I will yell, "There's nothing to see here, move along."
I will chase the failure voices away with energy and courage. I hope you do too, because you have so much to offer the world. Whatever your weedy garden is, don't let failure get you down or keep you down.
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