Plant Your Own Garden
“Comparison is the thief of all joy.”
--Theodore Roosevelt
It is the eighth week of quarantine, and many of us continue to grow wearier as the days pass by. As we struggle to find our way in this new world, an interesting dichotomy has emerged, and many of us find ourselves vacillating between overwhelm and boredom. Tendencies to worry or procrastinate are being exacerbated by this situation, and in my case has led me to being more judgmental than normal. While others have been the object of this at times, (apologies to my family!) the main recipient has been myself. I am aware that I am not feeling good about myself, and when I stop to examine my thought patterns for clues as to why, I have noticed an overarching theme: Comparison to others.
Nine times out of ten I can trace my negative feelings back to a comparison I have made. Sometimes it is a comparison to an unrealistic expectation I have for myself, but more often than not I am comparing myself to someone else’s life or accomplishments. Thinking on why this is more prevalent now than previously, it appears counterintuitive at first -- why would I be comparing myself to others more frequently and aggressively now, when I am not seeing them at all? I think it has everything to do with the lens through which we are currently viewing the world. For many of us, social media, the 24 hour news cycle, and zoom calls are our only interaction with the outside. Social media has been studied enough by the experts to consistently reveal an inverse relationship between social media consumption, and feelings of self-confidence and self-worth. We are all aware that others put a curated version of their lives out there for others to see, but that doesn’t change the way it makes us feel about it all. And I am guilty of this too -- a fact I don’t always like about myself. I want you to have a good impression of me, to see me as being real, but definitely as holding it together. I can tell you there are ugly parts, but you won’t see them on my Instagram feed.
It seems I am not alone in all this, as nearly every other parent I talk to feels they are falling short in the homeschooling/parenting/working-from-home role we find ourselves in. We skim over the fact that few of us grew up with a dream of becoming an untrained, unpaid elementary school teacher, while still trying desperately to hold onto our actual jobs. It feels like it should be easy because we spend time observing people on the internet that appear to be doing it better than we are. Lately I have been formulating a metaphor to a camera -- a fancy one with a really good lens that can zoom in to get really great detail, but also zoom out to capture a whole landscape from afar. I think this is the trouble with what we are seeing outside of our own bubble of isolation; People are zooming the camera in on the highlights of their lives, and when we go to take in the ‘big picture’ from the news media, all we see is accumulating death and financial ruin. By pointing this out I am not trying to downplay the crisis. This is by all accounts a crisis, and will inevitably shift the lives of humans across the planet moving forward. But we should not forget that we do have some control over what we choose to focus on. We can see ourselves as the owner of the camera, and shift our manner of taking in the world and the current situation.
In preparing to write this blog post, I flipped through the notes I have taken in my reading over the past several months. I came across Jordan Peterson’s “compare yourself only to the person you were yesterday” from his 12 Rules for Life, and it brought me back to the heart of why it can be so debilitating to constantly compare ourselves to others. When we do this we rob ourselves of our own uniqueness -- our very reason for being here in the first place. We must believe that we have a sacred place in the world, a purpose that is purely ours. A similar sentiment is preached in Joshua Medcalf’s Chop Wood Carry Water. In this fictionalized account of a great sensei of archery and his eager young apprentice, the master tells his student: “Let me tell you two very important things: comparison is the thief of all joy, and the grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it.”
And this brought me to gardens (stay with me here--I promise I will tie this all together!) In the early days of quarantine, I hustled over to Home Depot and got everything I needed to start a small container garden with the kids. It was a goal I talked about for years, but March and April were always so busy that I could never figure out how to fit it in. All the sudden I had time, and a growing scarcity mindset. What better time to attempt growing our own food? The first small bulb of green appeared peeking out from behind the leaf of a tomato plant yesterday, and I got my first taste of this magical process. While many would consider the time we are living in to be a metaphorical winter, I would like to think of it like springtime. This can be a time to plant, a time to connect to our roots, to lay some groundwork for a future harvest. A time for us to invest in our own lives and not be so concerned with what others are doing with theirs.
I don’t mean for this to sound like a call to action, or a ‘tips and tricks’ list for being more productive during quarantine. Quite the opposite, I encourage you to release yourself from all the unrealistic ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’, and lean into the small things that become fruitful over time. After all, a seed is a tiny thing, its potential realized through the care and nurturing it receives. You could choose to plant in any area of your life -- your work, a passion project, a home project, or deepening a relationship with a friend or family member.
The Seasons of Life, by Jim Rohn is another gem of a book I have read in the past several months. As the title suggests, the author uses the four seasons to describe the ways our lives parallel this cycle of nature. I thought to close I might share his words from the final paragraph in his chapter on Springtime:
“Life is truly a constant beginning, a constant opportunity, a constant springtime. We need only to learn to look once again at life as we did as children, letting fascination and curiosity give us welcome cause for taking a second look, rather than taking for granted. Fortune, happiness, and peace of mind await those who learn to look for the miraculous hidden among the common. The unique blending of sun, soil, and seed at the springtime of seasons will provide predictable and miraculous results for those who will learn to take full and complete advantage of the spring.”