Thursday, May 31, 2012

an unexamined life is not worth living

Sometimes things in life are crystal clear to me the first time I come across them. Other times patterns and ideas and my own personality are muddy and hard to understand. Sewing has taught me that if I don't understand what went wrong in a seam or a quilt the problem probably started right at the beginning with a flawed pattern or a badly measured block.

Applying sewing to life, when I don't understand something maybe I need to go back to the beginning and rethink the first assumption I made and see if then I can understand the outcome.

Here is an example:


This is my garden. Sad weedy place that it is. I always thought that if I had more time my garden and flower beds would look great. If I had more space I would create a garden paradise.  All it would take was a bit more dedication. The assumption I've always had was that I love to garden. My sisters are master gardeners. My mom has always gardened. All the characters I've admired in the hundreds of books I've read have loved to garden. I love to read and everyone I know who loves to read also loves to garden.

Last year I had an epiphany. I don't like to garden. The reason I don't spend time in the garden is because I don't want to. I don't like getting dirty. I don't like bending over, or sweating in the sun, or swatting bugs or getting pricked by thorns. How could I be so old and not know something so basic about myself?

An unexamined life is not worth living...... That may be a bit extreme but worth reflection. 


5 comments:

  1. Nice blog!Please stop over to mine and check it out and follow back- we can all use more followers!

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  2. Your garden looks like mine! We both need to do some work don't we. :)

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  3. G'day. Lovely post and you are being honest. Take care. Liz...

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  4. Ha Ha If you don't live and Learn you aren't living. You haven't thought about the garden a whole lot.. it seems you just kinda let it slide by, 'cos you were so busy with all the stuff you loved doing and some stuff you had to do... so now you've sat down and had a think about it and voila up pops the answer....
    so get your sisters in for a weekend.. promise them a quilt or something and let them work their magic in your garden :-D
    Thanks for the smile you gave me. :-D
    Sylvie

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  5. I feel your pain. Many years ago my husband took care of all the yard. Then he started having major health problems so I thought I would take care of the flower beds. Well, by then they were so overgrown with weeds that I had my grandson come help me do the heavy work. We tore up one whole flower bed and redid it. I decided I liked gardening after all....however, I'm getting older and it's not as much fun as it used to be. I would like to just sit and watch it grow without the weeds.

    The flowers you saw on my blog are in a long bed that goes along our driveway and is completely filled in with growing plants by this time of year. However, there are still weeds to pull. Hubby has been doing some of the weeding, but I've decided I'm going to call in some help.

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