Tending the garden of a good life

“You reap what you sow.” This phrase from the Bible has long been used to remind folks that what you cre­ate and nur­ture in the world is what you will har­vest. In a very con­crete way, this is true. If I plant and tend toma­toes in my lit­tle raised beds, I will har­vest toma­toes when late sum­mer rolls around. It is unlike­ly that I will har­vest beets or aspara­gus. I will reap what I have sown. Most would agree, how­ev­er, that this is not the intent of the phrase. It is more about get­ting back from the world what you put into it. I like to think of it in terms of har­vest­ing a crop based on what we pour our ener­gy into.

This can be both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. There are many peo­ple out there who spend their ener­gies on mak­ing them­selves and those around them hap­py. They pour their souls into sup­port­ing pos­i­tive caus­es, cul­ti­vat­ing friend­ships, and effect­ing changes aimed at the greater good. They invest heav­i­ly in their lit­tle gar­den of com­mu­ni­ty with its order­ly rows of rela­tion­ships. Life may throw some weeds their way. The uni­verse may decide that their prover­bial gar­dens need a few storms to make them appre­ci­ate the sun­ny weath­er and a few bee­tles to help them see the butterflies. 

But those lit­tle neg­a­tives are tak­en in stride and used as fod­der to fur­ther nur­ture the good life full of friends, loved ones, and acquain­tances they are creating.

Some folks go through life look­ing for the worst in oth­ers and refus­ing to trust in the good­ness of peo­ple. They are con­stant­ly dis­ap­point­ed by those around them because they choose to see only the bad instead of the good. Since every­one, no mat­ter how awe­some, is a mix of good and bad qual­i­ties, if you search hard enough for those bad qual­i­ties, you will find them. 

This turns into a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. If some­one does some­thing bad, it rein­forces the view that they nev­er should have been trust­ed in the first place. And if the per­son does some­thing won­der­ful, it is dis­missed as a false­hood, only a mask of good­ness hid­ing the person’s true nature. For these folks, every flaw in oth­ers, every poor deci­sion, every lapse in judg­ment, every less-than-stel­lar moment is tak­en as a per­son­al attack and evi­dence of the person’s hor­ri­ble­ness. They cling to their hurt feel­ings and nour­ish them. They may view for­give­ness as a defeat, when win­ning is the goal. They may strug­gle to see that every argu­ment, every dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, every con­fronta­tion involves mul­ti­ple individuals. 

We are nev­er going to adore those around us all the time; it isn’t a real­is­tic goal. Those we are clos­est to will inevitably dis­ap­point us. They will make us angry. They will act in ways we don’t approve of. If we cut peo­ple out of our lives every time the rela­tion­ship expe­ri­ences a hic­cup, we will even­tu­al­ly cut out everyone. 

What a lone­ly way to go through this existence.

While I sup­pose there may be some tru­ly “bad” peo­ple out there, I have yet to meet any. I have met lots of flawed peo­ple, lots of com­pli­cat­ed peo­ple, lots of peo­ple strug­gling to make good life choic­es, but not any tru­ly bad people. 

If you tend a gar­den of grudges, per­ceived slights, hurt feel­ings, and self-right­eous­ness, you will reap a har­vest of dis­ap­point­ment, bit­ter­ness, iso­la­tion, and lone­li­ness. If you tend a gar­den of for­give­ness, enthu­si­asm, kind­ness, grace, and humil­i­ty, you will reap a har­vest of con­tent­ment, peace, and friendship.

Tend the gar­den you want to harvest.