The Overnight Garden

Dear My Toy Garden friends!

There were four moms. Each with a toddler tucked in a high chair next to them making a perfect mom/toddler/mom pattern around the table. A sunny day and a fun outing prompted Nicholas and I to stop for lunch at a favorite spot of ours and landed us at the neighboring table to these moms. Their conversation began with how much they all loved Amazon Prime and how much money it saved them. My shoulders sagged a bit. Next came how crazy their children were about Elmo. My shoulders dropped a bit more. Another shift in conversation and the toddlers became a bit fidgety. An arsenal of snacks appeared....all highly processed with a rainbow of color additives accompanied by sippy cups filled with milk. When that was followed by the handing over of the Iphones like synchronized swimmers, I confess I think I sighed an audible sigh.

Let me insert here. I am not perfect. I am far from it. I impulse buy candy bars at the grocery checkout, drink beer, find excuses not to exercise and lose my temper with my children. No one is perfect and no one should ever expect to be. What I also am is a learner. My choices today are colored very much by my daily commitment to learn something new. Who I am today is a very different person...thankfully...from who I was a year ago, 5 years ago...to think back 10 or 20 years, I laugh at myself. My habits then included a 2 lb bag of M&M's weekly and a daily stop at McDonald's for a small fry and an ice cream cone.

Imagine with me if you would a garden. One filled with gorgeous flowers carefully planned and cared for whose colors spill from one bed to the next drawing the eye onward and inward at the same time. How did that garden get there? Were seeds planted one day and then magically all was amazing the next? Sadly, there are no overnight gardens. Gardens, like behaviors, are grown over a long period of time and are ever changing. Seeds are planted. Watered. Plants begin to grow. Weeds are pulled. Plants are pruned. Plants moved to other areas to grow better. New plants are selected and cultivated. Over time...weeks, months, years...beauty grows in gardens and in our lives.

This week I invite you to look at your behaviors...your life choices. Are you a people or a sheeple? Sheep graze with little thought of their course. People have the gift of learning given to them. Choose one area you'd like to know more about....child development, nutrition, media influences, exercise, schooling, religion, anything....and devote 10 minutes a day to growing your garden.(See this previous Power 10 newsletter.) Make your daily choices grounded in facts that your mind is hungry to know rather than blindly following others. You'll soon be enjoying the beauty of your knowledge and will find choices you once had are hard to imagine doing again.

I invite you then to take it one step farther and go plant some seeds in someone else's garden to see what might bloom. I did have a conversation with the moms that day about dairy and if just one of them paused to think for a minute and perhaps consider learning more, my little seed might have grown some roots. Go share your seeds that you are passionate about! Bouquets are always best when they are shared aren't they?