Vital Life Insights

In my plan to savor my own life experience and really accept age and the passing of time and wisdom and not just smooth skin and young energy...I have just made a new step forward. We, all of us, are learning things, all the time....lessons that are our own little gold nuggets that slowly compile to create wisdom. I think it's a shame that we never really consciously examine what we've learned and what we are learning and turn each nugget over in our hands, really looking at it and really feeling it between our fingers, appreciating the things we have learned through hard won experience.

I used to be a big journaler, never really consistantly the every-single-day diary scribbler, but consistant enough that I've filled several lined books with reams of accounts of "what I did today." I don't journal that way anymore. I'm glad that I did it because it got me started: I wrote, I thought, however shallowly about my life and my self. These days my journalling is more expressive and more insightful and much more useful, I use my journal to sort out my insides and plot life in ways that count and make sense.

All my classic lined page journals.

My current journals (I have two at the moment, one for writing and one for visuals) are a little out of the box. This is what journalling looks like for me right now. I'm often answering questions, making lists, making bold statements and writing down my hopes and small healing reminders to the tattered, quiet bit of me inside.

My visual journal

My written journal, in a sketchbook.

This week I decided to start making a list of my major life insights in my writing journal. We all know there are certain trite bits of wisdom (however true and meaningful) that could pepper any individual's list, but what I'm talking about instead are the things that feel vital to you right now. Personal insights: things that have to do with your own individual thinking and pondering and feeling and reading. Here are some good ways to dig them up if nothing is coming to you.

• Revisit old journal entries (if you journal) and look for recurrent themes.
• Think about the things you're talking about all the time to your spouse, your children, your best friend, your mom...vital bits of wisdom are often things we're so struck by that we talk about them over and over while digesting.
• Think about someone who bugs you a lot and ask yourself what they are doing that you would never do, write that down and look at it. Is there some life insight there that you can gather up?
• Look around you at your bookshelves and remember, as you spot particular books, important things you learned from them.
• Think about a painful life experience you've had. Are there any life lessons you can say you learned through it?
• What did you trip over lately and then you say to yourself "I sure thought I learned that a long time ago!"
• What do you consider to be the most important things your parents and your spiritual community have taught you?

So....there's some prompts to get you going. I'd love to hear what you're all learning at the moment, feel free to share in the comments.

Here's what's on my list so far:

1. Christianity, and maybe all of life is about LOVE...and nothing more.
2. We are all failures who are valuable.
3. All personal connections/relationships in life are good and of value.
4. I need respect.
5. Morning headstarts are the key to sanity.
6. Kindness earns you love, respect comes via achievement.
7. All emotions are valid and need to be looked in the eye and accepted, even the big scary ones.
8. Beauty is important for my vibrant health.
9. Junk food addiction is passive suicide.
10. Generosity is very important.
11. Repetition=Skill
12. Anger, unaddressed becomes bitterness.

 What has life taught you through experience? Dish it out!

Green Thoughts

Was outside again today, rushing to get things in the ground before the rain we're supposed to have for several days began. Ended up getting all the stuff planted that I wanted which felt really good but, I do have to admit that by the end of it all the boys and I were mud from head to toe and being thoroughly misted on which meant that we were also pretty soaked. No real harm done, just the first warm spring rain in our hair. What's good for the crocus is good for the boy.

We peeled off the muddy socks and shucked our shoes and padded in for story-time snuggling under a couch throw before lunch and nap. Now we're all frizzy hair and coziness and I can't get the garden wheels to stop turning. Of course, it doesn't help when such tantalizing packages are arriving on my doorstep.

So, yes, I placed an order for a few more perennials, and started making lists of things to change in my garden this year:

"Do not allow nicotiana to flop all over the sweet william. Support rings or else!" and "This fall be sure to order regale lilies and magic lilies." and also "Make sure to work sunflowers in somewhere." along with such helpful bits as "Underplant the black-eyed susans with heliotrope!" I am making lists of all the things I need to do, ("Move strawberry babies, pull garlic from last year, divide lemon verbena, trim sweetheart rose, add mulch to box bed, and tie fence more securely to stakes")

I am honestly a terribly disorganized gardener. I keep no notes about what I bought from whom which year or what its Latin name is and I never label anything. I buy things willy nilly without mapping out the colors, heights or flow of my garden patch and just plan on moving what doesn't work when it starts to bother me. I don't see myself getting a whole lot more organized, there are too many other things I want to do in life and frankly, I get along alright in spite of my jumbly ways. But, this year for the first time I thought, "You know, I could actually see keeping some sort of a garden journal." Not a terribly particular one mind you but, maybe the sort of place where I could put these lists and then later in June jot down what is putting on a splendid show and what plants I still am hoping to grow before I die (moonflowers, parma violets, sweet alyssum) and what new successes I've had this year (scented sweet peas, angel's trumpet, heliotrope, carrots and pineapple sage). That I could see being quite useful. A very free-form, sort of dirt-smudged place to keep my garden mucking notes, somewhere where the bits would all be bound together with a solid spine and recognizably backed and fronted with a nice botanical cover design of some sort. Wonder where I should start looking? Do any of you keep garden writing year to year?