SPRING is officially here, according to the calendar. Everything is blooming. We could be experiencing the desire to do exactly the same thing except for the hurdles and the not-right-nows that are holding us back. There are at least a million of THOSE things, right? Maybe we just need to view them differently.
What if we thought of those things as if they were compost? Here’s what I mean….
My father used to grow the most outrageous tomatoes every year. Cat-head big and bright red. We counted down the days until we could pluck them right off the vine. With taste buds squirting in anticipation, we bit into them just like an apple.
FYI: In the case of a really succulent tomato, salty/sweet and super juicy, the juice runs down your arm and drips off your elbow, creating one of those “it-doesn’t-get-better-than-this” moments. As my dad would say,
“Yep, all because of the best compost EVER!”
Just the word, COMPOST is actually fascinating. The term “compost” was politically correct before “politically correct” jumped into our culture as a way to avoid saying what you really felt. Think about it---compost is a really dressed up name for a four-letter word beginning in “S” and ending in “T”. Lots and lots of it.
Take that stinky, steaming brown stuff and mix it with all kinds of other nasty garbage; old, rotten food, yesterday’s coffee grounds, chicken bones, along with other utter yucki-ness and throw it all together in a huge heap. You have the recipe. What appears to be the most wretched pile of yuck, requires turning it over and over, until it’s just the right blend and consistency. Then the transfer from vile pile to soil mixture, around all the plants “lucky” enough to receive its benefits takes place. Compost literally becomes the vehicle for accelerated growth and the “oooh’s” and “aaahhhh’s” to follow.
Compost and life have a lot in common. No matter how deeply we might find ourselves up to our eyeballs in a mess of stinky brown stuff---there’s a huge gift to be gotten.
Paying attention to whatever we are mixing into our lives, especially the things that seem highly charged and utterly negative allows us to create vivid and committed discernment about our future---crafting a clear and definitive new vision about our desired results. What to turn over, what to sift through, what to trash or treasure as we blend all the elements into being.
The chaos of the compost around us can feed opportunity. Breakdowns can be viewed as course corrections---new nexts, propelling us to something even bigger than we might have ever imagined. Believing that everything on our compost pile has its purpose for potential, is an act of pure intention.
Some people call it growing up. Others might call it optimism.
I call it all those things mixed with a big shovel full of faith...
What would you call it?
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