The Green Green Grass of Home

If you know me at all, you know I think being unique totally rocks and that blending in to the pack isn’t necessarily all that exciting. Just because everyone is wearing it, doing it, watching it, doesn’t mean I have to. I usually end up trying to create my own path, doing things just a wee bit different than others. In fact on my way home from the office the other day I was walking on a green-space-turned-white with only one track of shoe prints ahead of me. I started walking in those tracks but before I knew it I was creating my own footprints in the snow. I caught myself and chuckled – typical.

It reminds me of the individuality of each tree, plant or flower that flourishes on this place we call earth. We’re all just like a bunch of plants – various stages of growth, beauty, varying needs….don’t water me too much, water me every day, I need to be root bound, I need space to grow… Some give off a beautiful fragrance that can be noticed from a distance, others have a stench that makes you want to walk on the other side of the street. There are plants that provide nourishment, some have healing properties, while others need to be avoided because of the poison that exudes from them.

There are flowers with velvety soft petals that feel smooth and silky to the touch. Some are prickly like a spruce tree – but even they can be lit up and decorated to show off their usefulness and sappiness.

No matter the space they take up, how long they live, where they thrive or where they wilt, one thing we know: they are vital to the survival of the planet because of the oxygen they create. Each of us as humans too, have a role to play in contributing to one another as we journey through this thing we call life. Just as each plant is unique and has its own offering, each of us also has something to offer, our own unique spot to fill.

A gardenia cannot produce maple syrup. Although a lilac bush gives off an incredibly beautiful scent, it cannot heal as an aloe vera does. A blade of grass on its own does not provide a soft carpet to walk on – it takes the masses to accomplish a collective goal.

So the moral to my story? Stop wishing you were a rose when you pushed through the soil as a fern, don’t ‘pine’ after what someone else was created to do, because as you long to be something else, not only are you wasting needless energy on what you can’t change, you are not fully living or giving from that sweet spot that only you can do. You my friend, are not here to live someone else’s life. You are here to live yours, so welcome yourself to the green green grass you call your soul’s home.

Tell me just for fun, if you were a plant of some kind what would you be? I’ll start – cala lily.