Watering Weeds

I rather like dandelions. I enjoy the fields of yellow flowers in springtime.

Others in my life have a different view of them. Some others in my life have even been known to hate them so much they will poison the ground with dangerous chemicals in order to get rid of them. I understand that some kinds of impatiens are considered a weed in certain parts of the world, while we spend big money to transplant them into our gardens here.

What seems a weed to some, seems rather inoffensive, even desireable to another. But the best argument I've heard about distinguishing between a weed or not, is whether a plant is invasive. That is, does it take over and choke out other, more beneficial or desirable plants?

Personally I think grass is highly overrated - but the argument that dandelions are bad because they choke out and replace grass makes some sense to me.  

As I was watering some vegetables in my garden the other day, it occurred to me that I don’t always recognize which plants are weeds. They all got watered nonetheless.

And then I had this thought: 

"Be careful what you water in the garden that is your life."

You can cultivate all sorts of things - but just because they're green, or even have flowers, doesn't mean that they are completely good.

I realize that little habits in my life might come to resemble watering weeds.

In some ways I'm fortunate that my weeds are not the big vices like gambling or drugs or porn. Eventually most everyone knows those are weeds and comes to recognize how easily they take over, though they can be ever so difficult to uproot.

While I've been spared the destructiveness of the more obvious vices, there are those kinder, gentler weeds, less thorny ones, that aren't even always clearly weeds, that exist in my life and easily get watered. Sometimes it's because I really don't recognize them as weeds. Sometimes it's because I'm too tired or distracted to discriminate. 

For me, one of those weeds might best be called "living in the future". I'm prone to spending rather a large amount of time thinking about the future, and part of it has paid off handsomely for me. I'm usually a few steps ahead of things in life, anticipating and managing problems before they arise, planning well, and making decisions that account for a range of possible outcomes. I research. I take pride in being prepared, and a little secret pride in being more prepared than the next guy.

But like most innocuous weeds, what seems like a pleasant bit of greenery can become so much more. And "living in the future" can easily start to take over more and more of your conscious moments, taking you from the present, into the "what ifs?" of tomorrow.

Sometimes those "what ifs" are anxious. I know a lot of people for whom this is the case. Lots of days my future orientation is not anxious, but rather creative and imaginary. Which can make it even harder to recognize as a weed. I'm prone to spend a lot of time thinking about "the next thing". The next house, the next job, the next project, the next vacation, the next idea, the next big change...

This "next thing" kind of plant can live quite nicely in amongst the rest of the garden of my mind. But I've also noticed it has a tendency to behave like a weed as it starts to take over and dominate my thinking. Rather than enjoy and be present with what's happening now, my mind is always inclined to move on and push towards "progress". The joys of the present so easily get choked out by things that could or might happen someday.

How much beauty, how much goodness, how much of the presence of the Divine do we miss because our preoccupation with the future has taken over?

I think one of the ways we water these weedy thought habits is by spending time with them.

Neuroscientists have demonstrated that a rough correlation exists between how much time and practice you put into thinking something, and a corresponding physical change in neural networks. We strengthen the thought patterns that we practice. We are literally formed by the thought habits we have. The more time you spend thinking about the future, the more readily available those thoughts become, and more likely they are to be accessed. 

But beyond simple repetition, I think we water our weedy thought habits when we experience them as successful. Success reinforces us both in achieving a positive outcome, and avoiding a negative one. When we plan ahead, such as thinking through every detail of an upcoming event and it goes well, we feel our efforts were justified, effective, and maybe even responsible for creating the happiness we experienced. Worrying often has the same tendency to create an illusion of it’s own usefulness in avoiding a negative outcome. We often assume that by anticipating a something bad happening, if it fails to occur, that our worrying was warranted and useful. And while both of these may have an element of truth, the down side of it is that we are reinforced in our habit of being future focused, and without realizing it, it can start to become a lifestyle of the mind. Success makes us tempted to water the weeds without realizing exactly what it is that we are cultivating. 

Beautiful but invasive things can take over. And it’s not that there’s necessarily anything so wrong with dandelions. But it seems that humans flourishing requires a certain amount of diversity. Weeds, by their invasive nature, choke out diversity and one species takes over and dominates. Just as a good garden requires a diverse range of plant species, our mental and emotional health seems to require a certain diversity of thought life. We must be careful not to let thoughts about the future or the past take over and choke out our ability to be in the present moment. 

I can live with a few dandelions. Thinking ahead is fine and good. But I have to watch what I'm watering. I have to be aware of how easily a pretty yellow flower can take over. 

Funerals for the living

Have you ever been stuck listening to a conversation that you just didn't want to hear? 

I was on a plane seated beside a young couple who were on their way home from their own spur of the moment wedding in Las Vegas. They spent the first hour picking apart the flaws in each other's families in an incredibly mean spirited and vulgar fashion, and at volume that made it all but impossible not to hear.  At some point they seemed to realize that I was sitting beside them and they interrupted me to ask what I was reading. I told them it was a biography of Steve Jobs (which drew puzzled looks on their faces). I explained that he was the founder of Apple, and likely was responsible for Mac's and iPods and changed the music industry....but was now dead. Their response was one of horror. Apparently my saying the word "dead" was completely disgusting to them. Recalling the taboo around the word "dead" in some cultures, I quickly recanted and told them he had "passed". Upon which, they were visibly relieved and returned to their gruesome dissection of the personal traits of each other's friends. (Who knew that elbows were even part of the way people evaluate others' worth as human beings?...but to some people they are crucial. ) 

It reminded me of how quickly death and dying can elicit responses of disgust and horror. 

Our phobia of death and mortality is so pervasive that defences like denial have become entrenched and habitual, to the point that we fail to give recognition to what has passed, what is lost, and how we suffer because of it.

I think most people in our culture struggle to grieve well. By which I mean, we generally struggle to effectively confront loss.

I'm on board with the idea that funeral's should be a celebration of a person's life, but not at the expense of also engaging the true reality of loss and all the sadness that entails. One of my few painful memories from childhood was being told by a relative that I shouldn't be sad when someone dear to me had died. Even as a six-year old I knew that I needed to feel the pain of losing someone important. The possibility of afterlife changes the meaning of loss, but it doesn't eliminate the sorrow of it entirely, and to pretend otherwise is a fool's errand. Many of us skirt the feelings of loss these days when someone dies by either avoiding the unpleasant rituals of death altogether, or trying to divert our attention by focusing only on the positive (hence my hesitation about being celebratory without acknowledging sorrow).

But this difficulty with grief doesn't just apply to actual death. It's a problem with loss in general.

We often fail to acknowledge the passing - the loss of things in our lives - especially when there's no body to bury.

Theologians like Arthur McGill, and psychologists like Rollo May, have suggested that we avoid confronting loss altogether in our culture because it reminds us of death, that perceived ultimate loss that inevitably awaits us. So we pretend that people can stay young. We offer products and services that create the illusions that time isn't lost or passing. We even desperately grasp on to nostalgia and recreations of our past to shield us from the truth that everything is in a constant state of change.

There are real consequences however when we fail to acknowledge loss. Perhaps most important of those consequences is the difficulty it creates in allowing us to live the life we have in the present. 

So I've taken to giving some advice to people that seems a little peculiar at first glance: have funerals for things and people that are gone, even if they're still technically alive.

Sometimes people have changed so much they have become a totally different person than you used to know, and show no signs of going back. And this hurts. It hurts that they will never again play that role in your life, that they will never be the same person to you that they were. And like all loss, the more loving and important they were to you in the past, the deeper the hurt when they've become this new person who doesn't even resemble the one you knew. 

It's a loss and it needs to be grieved. You don't get to go to the funeral home and look at a made up body in a casket.  But you can bring in some elements of ritual that help you say goodbye and move through the grieving process. 

Write a eulogy. Identify all the dearest memories, all the funny stories, all the things that person meant to you. Read it out loud to friends at a pub, or write it on index cards with crayon while sitting in your bathtub and listening to music they loved. It doesn't really matter the format as long as you're clearly seeing and naming what was, and acknowledging that it has passed. 

Some of us need to have funerals for ourselves.

In a life permanently altered by an accident or medical condition, or even just the slow process of deterioration that comes with aging, we are changed so significantly that a part of us is gone. Very often our identities are tied up in what we "do" in our physical capabilities and activities. Is it any wonder then that an illness or disabling condition can feel remarkably like a part of our selves has died? This too is a loss we must grieve. The loss of self, even while we are alive is painful and disorienting. And if you need to have a funeral, go ahead. Wear black, bury something, make a poster-board of memories of what has passed. Honour your loss. Don't try to make it a good thing too quickly. Many of us have been lead to under appreciate the value and importance of negative emotions, thinking that we should quickly find a happier note to sing lest we fall into wallowing. A funeral can be a good place to find permission to be sad and cry. 

At the heart of all grief is the uniquely human emotion of bittersweet. We who are made in the image of the Divine have this capacity to feel both sorrow and joy at the same time. Joy for what was, and for what the person or thing meant to us. But also sorrow. Sorrow for the fact that it is now gone and can never be exactly replaced. Remember, that its irreplaceable quality is precisely what made it so precious and special while it was present. 

Loss is an ongoing part of our lives as they were in the past. Ignoring loss steals the present from us as well. 

On one hand I'm tempted to be critical of the couple that sat next to me on the plane for covering up the reality of death with a more sanitized word like "passed" to avoid facing the fear and pain associated with loss.

On the other hand, I think the word "passed" has it's own value for marking the constant flow of loss that happens in all of our lives. There will never be a day exactly like today. Friends I love are getting older and closer to illness. My kids are growing up. Opportunities to show love are vanishing as quickly as they appear. 

Today is passing. 

All of life around us is passing as we journey forward. It makes every moment precious. It means constant losses. 

I'm not writing this piece with any one person in mind. All of you who read this blog are on journey's of loss because you are human.

So may you discover the quintessentially bittersweet quality of human life in all of its fullness by acknowledging and honouring your losses. Even if it means having a small funeral for something that's alive but changed... and eating some triangle sandwiches in a church basement afterward.