Tuesday, December 30, 2008
PRUNED
I pruned the roses this morning.
It is a pleasure to do so.
Somehow the idea of cutting things back to make them grow is a happy paradox.
It feels right in a human sense too.
We get rid of bad habits, thoughts, actions. We grow.
That is my experience.
With roses "bad" is pretty simple. We want the dead wood out. No use in keeping what doesn't work any more.
We want to cut down to new buds so the potential of the rose can be realized.
We cut out cross shoots, branches that go off track and don't work to fulfill the ideal shape of the bush. A bowl.
And we pull off "suckers", the little branches that are a waste of energy, that will never come to anything.
Come to think of it, the metaphor holds pretty well at this level too.
As humans, we grow when we get rid of the old useless stuff, place our growth priorities on the emerging self, quit wasting our time on useless paths and get rid of actions that turn out to be ineffective and uselesll. That don't go anywhere.
I don't think I am pushing the connections too much. Do you?
Anyway. The roses are pruned for this season. My pruning is ongoing.
Metaphors now put away for another year.
