The time garden...and weeds

Organic materials change over time.

• "Time changes everything."
• "Give it time."
• "Ok, it may look good now, but what about when you're 60?"
• "Its going to the weeds."

 We are, most certainly, in that category as human beings; we change over time; we are all time travelers:

• You don’t have to be wiling to travel. Remember, we are talking about time:  it can do with you what it wants - kill you, age you, maim you or wake you.  Breathing makes us time travelers. Its our ticket to ride and our spaceship is embodiment. Look in the mirror: those wrinkles are skid marks. Your body is time traveling and “You” are along for the ride. - girlQuantum

Sometimes our culture judges these changes as beautiful and that we say, they say get better with time:  wine, cheese... a garden, a patina ...and maybe even a life. 

Weeds get in the way
I was perhaps eight, when I waged my very first argument to protect a beautiful, micro flower from the gratuitous judgment of "That?  That is just a weed." 

What is a weed?  It is something that does not fit in a garden and in some way is unpleasant or deadly. 

I see fully formed weeds in the lives of individuals and families in hospice.  It is like a sped up timelapse.  The weed seeds imbedded in our thoughts have matured to invasive weeds and overtaken the gardens of their lives. Other seeds are such  kindly  demonstrations of love and lives well lived, that it feeds me...just being there.

It is not the quantity of people surrounding the people passing, that is up to fate. But I see the beauty of their mind-gardens.  They are still using it all, accepting it all and delighting in who shows up.   They have ceased the hard work of  weeding out the unpleasant, because they have discovered that in a balanced garden, the  growth of the good pushes out the weeds . Over the course of their lives, they have learned to focus on the good, the beautiful, the blessings and allow those to grow.  They have allowed themselves to be loved. 

For the most part, it has become a self-weeding garden.  The growth of the good, is the pruning. 

Memory is a Self-weeding, self seeding garden. 
What and how I choose to remember – makes a difference in my life now.

• “The secret of happiness as you age is to live backwards. … I look where it is good.  I know about the bad. There has to be the bad, but I look at the good thing." - Alice Sommer Hertz 2012, a pianist, a holocaust survivor and 108 years of age.
  

              
Alice Sommer Hertz is an optimist; her twin sister died decades ago; she was the pessimist which usually translates to a reduction in life by 14 years according to recent studies.

Her garden is self-seeding.  I want mine to be too.