Whilst layering the garden with mulch at its final stage I had a funny thought come up in my head. What can the garden bed teach me from the phrase "making one's bed"?
I have been listening to Thom Yorke's music group, Atoms for Peace religiously since the start of the year and one of the lyrics that stuck in my head was,
"Guess I made my bed and I'll lie in it"
from the song Default.
I have been thinking about this phrase regularly as it struck a sentimental chord with me. My mum said it was one of my Grandfather's recurring phrases when she grew up.
The phrase is harsh. On a basic level, it talks to the value of accountability. A sort of responsibility one needs to take for their actions: what one sows, one reaps.
However, on the second glance, this phrase although traditionally passed down two or three generations in my family feels uncomfortable. It has a karmic value about it, where the original choices one makes, one is stuck to its repercussions; thus it claims choice is absolute, concrete, and fixed to your 'destiny'. Furthermore, it dissects decisions repercussions action from effect into two neat compartments. What you reap, is what you sow. What you originally do at one time will affect you in the future/ present. Thus, you are stuck to your choices, you have to face them in one way or another.
In my experience, as much as I try to be accountable for the "direct" choices I make, the complexity of "the season" of life I am in, and who has affected me in any particular season, also affects my decision making.
When I was a child, my parents made 90% of the choices for me. This season I was able to act only in a certain way that more or less directly reflects my parent's facilitation. In other seasons, friends, mourning periods, milestone, etc my decisions were affected by a myriad of people who enter and leave my life, both by my choice and theirs.
Seasons, like contexts, be it political, cultural, spiritual, have various effects on people's choices.
I am not shirking off accountability either. I am not saying that there is no point making "good" decisions because the universe has already plotted it for me. I guess what I am trying to understand is the choices one makes could be based on the context one is in. In this way, we do not reduce their actions and behaviours based on our simplistic understanding of past trauma, or event.
Making one's bed, needn't mean one needs to sleep in it. One may never have a bed, one may be sleeping on the floor.
People are not stuck in the choices they originally make, they can always move beyond it with the right help/ unhelp.
Life is more complicated than pure cause and effect. Might forgiveness break this chain? I wonder how might actionable forgiveness positions cause and effect? Does it rupture the system?
Thus in light of the idea of cause and effect, I have been thinking about this phrase in the context of my garden; have I "reaped what I sowed?".
In my garden, my intentions have been to purely create a space that life can sustain. (In retrospect, my so-called intentions were mimicking what earth has practicing for aeons. Earth is life. Earth wants to sustain life. by me trying to 'sustain life", is like me telling a mountain I am going to save you. In other words, earth doesn't need saving, she does her job just fine, I must collaborate with her.)
Some of the plants are edible, others have aesthetic value, others attract certain pollinators. I am figuring out (bio)diversity and its numerous benefits in this process. The most interesting moments in my garden have been the times my seemingly good intentions created an outcome different from my original position.
The (garden) bed has been an insightful ground for me to understand complexity as opposed to a literal reductive understanding. Making a garden bed (sowing seeds)doesn`t mean one will reap its reward, neither does it mean one won't.
My goal-orientated intentions to plant pumpkin seeds, in the main garden bed a proved semi disastrous outcome, as the seeds never germinated even though I planned and prepared the soil as needed. Instead, the seeds that I chucked in the compost, seeds that I forgot, and thought would rot away, germinated. Confused, I transplanted these saplings to the main garden bed instead.
While the rationalist in me wanted to prove that the compost was a richer soil than the garden bed and it was just a coincidence and bad luck. I also learnt to accept that my environment also has a say in decisions. I am not in full control of my decisions, even if my intentions are positive.
A moral takeaway?
"Good" things happen to people who don't intend to be "good"
"bad" things happen to people who are intentionally "good"
Life is complex, and your heart, your 'good' intention is as important as observing and being open-minded to your surroundings and its' choices. "Life" can offer you things, that you never intended to "put out". I am learning to collaborate with the world, and on a small level, my garden. To go with the flow and yet be grounded in moral values has been challenging.
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