Do not be held hostage by perfectly curated lives on social media

As individuals, unless we take on new challenges, we can’t grow.  Without growth, we stagnate. Stagnation leads to life passing us by.  If we look at people’s perfectly curated lives on social media, it appears as if everyone gets it right first time.  It seems as if other’s lives are a series of successful stepping stones. 

As a gardener, I’ve killed a lot of plants. New plants are a type of new challenge, so as a gardener, my yard has seen a lot of failure.  My experience has taught me that very little is as simple as it appears and good outcomes often take more effort than is apparent from the perfectly curated lives one sees on social media. The stepping stones to success are often a series of failures.

And that’s OK.  Life is where we live it, not where it appears to be. 

In the same way as plants root themselves, I choose to root my life in the present, in reality, in my yard – not in social media.  To live a grounded life is to be open to the possibility of failure.  I double dug a deep bed, turning soil and clay, and turning it again.  The clay was hard packed and the work was difficult.  I planted potatoes in that bed and saw them flourish.  Then a tropical storm rolled by the Carolina coast and turned the back yard into a pond.  Despite the deep bed, my potatoes drowned.  

The next year, I tried again.  In a different place.  That year, we didn’t have a tropical storm, but we had a baking hot summer interrupted by two weeks of rain.  Again, tall, lush plants turned to mush.  So I tried something completely different.  I planted my slips in a tire, then as the potatoes grew, I added a second tire and filled it in.  Then a third and fourth.  The stack was built under a stand with a window pane for a roof so sun could get in, but rain could not.  I watered carefully.  After several seasons in which I started with more potatoes than I finished, I am able to harvest a good crop of potatoes.  It’s not a system that will work for everyone, but it works for me. 

It took several years and several failures to produce a crop of potatoes. Potatoes are not my only life lessons.  I’ve torn out my squash after been over-run by squashbugs, lost blueberry bushes to insufficiently acid soil and the fruit itself to birds.  I lost cuttings because they weren’t watered often enough during their fragile beginning when I was drowning in a dark sea of survivor’s guilt.  I’ve killed a lot of plants.  But my garden is still beautiful.  It’s home to birds and earthworms and each season I get to try again.  And each season, as I add new compost to the beds, the soil improves, becomes looser, more fertile, better able to drain, and simultaneously hold moisture longer.  

I’ve learned that that bed I dug and planted with potatoes that first year is close to the lowest lying point in my garden. It’s the first to get waterlogged and the last to dry out.  I’ve learned Meadowsweet loves wet feet, and that Meadowsweet seed can be hard to start.  Don’t believe failure is anything more than an opportunity to learn.  Never let it seep into your life as an indictment of your ability to endure and persevere and return with more experience and capability.  Don’t let failing as you learn how to do new things stand in the way of trying.  You gain much more by trying new things and learning from the process - and even dealing with the failure itself – than is possible when frozen by fear of failure. Don’t let someone else’s carefully curated social media pages hold you hostage.  And when you succeed remember the growth you found along the way. A garden can be rich with life even while looking a little unkempt.

Enjoy your garden, whatever happens, season after season.

 Header image: The compost bays in our garden disintegrating.  This was our third attempt at a good, long-lasting compost area.  They were rebuilt in concrete and horse panels and are more durable now.