To Grow is To Let Go
Most things in life are uncertain, however, the one thing that is certain is the one thing that’s certain for us all. The great paradox finds us eventually - to live we must die. None of us love that fact, but there it is. What’s worse is, to truly live we must learn to die. That the most alive people I’ve ever known are the same people who have become intimate with death, is not unique to the people in my life.
One of the hardest and most valuable lessons plants continue to teach me is, How to Let Go. When I first started collecting plants, I couldn’t even look at a plant I had killed and I cried more than a few times. To face the failure, the shame, the loss, took a couple of years to be honest. Losing plants, killing plants (unintentionally, of course), comes with plant care. It isn’t my favorite part of plant care by any stretch of the imagination, but it is one of the deepest truths plants have to share with us.
After caring for plants for over a decade now, I don’t cry anymore when I lose a plant, but it still hurts - I just experience the loss differently. They continue to teach me How to Let Go - the wisdom they share grows deeper and deeper. To grow is to die over and over again - in this truth, we can learn How to Let Go. To die isn’t to disappear, it’s to grow into something new, something more true.
People don’t often talk about the messiness involved with plant care, in every sense of the word. Plants show us all the time that growth requires death. Ask anyone who’s ever had an asparagus fern or olive tree, the amount of tiny leaves that can fall off in such a short amount of time is shocking. Letting go of what isn’t serving us anymore is a metaphor I find hard to miss in plant care - it confronts us every day.
That might seem like a glum reminder, but once again the beauty of nature softens even the harshest of truths. Nature allows you to see more clearly that it isn’t all about suffering. If living requires dying, what must that mean for our life? How might we show up differently each day when this stunning truth surrounds us? Might we want to basque in the warmth of the sun with our loved ones a little bit longer, a little less distracted? Might we look into ourselves a little more deeply to reveal the truths at our core? Might we understand more fully how utterly amazing it is that we are here at all - that we get to be here today?
That plants so clearly reveal these truths doesn’t make me depressed or hopeless, it makes me grateful. Truly deeply grateful.
