Loving Life As It Is

The other day I went on a tour of the Mendocino Botanical Garden. We looked closely at the miracle of tiny flowers on the heaths and heathers through a hand held magnifying glass. (Which is its own lesson that sometimes when we slow down and look closely so much beauty is revealed.) 

The small tour group gathered in the display house and the gardener there talked about the care of the begonias and fuchsias. Someone asked her, "Last year, these plants were so much more extravagant and abundant in their blooms. Why isn't it like that now?" 

And I thought: isn't the mind just like that? Always wanting life to be in full bloom, perpetually in bounty and exuberance. Comparing this year's garden (life) to last year's garden (life) and wondering what went wrong. 

The thing is we all know what abundance feels like. And we all know what it feels like when things are hard. 

When I say to you that we are going to practice "loving life is it is" do you roll your eyes and cringe at the positivity message? 

Please don't! 

I am not a fool, we are not fools . No one gets out of this life without a fair share of battle scars. And even the most attentively cared for garden (life) has seasons that are fallow. 

The gardener said something that stayed with me: in a diverse garden, there will always be plants that are thriving, plants that are flowering, plants that are resting, and plants that are in decline.

What if we didn't wait for things to be perfectly perfect in order to love life as it is? 

Life has cycles. Expansion and contraction are built into our bodies with the in-breath and the out-breath. They are built into the seasons with summer and winter. There is blooming and there is dormancy. There is abundance and there is loss.

Loving life as it is doesn't mean pretending that everything is wonderful. Maybe it means being willing to look closely at what is actually here.

And when we do, we may discover something beautiful that we would have missed while waiting for the garden to bloom.