Life is analogous to many things, perhaps anything if you’re an astute enigmatologist.

Today at The Farm, my mind heavy & swirling in the late afternoon, I made the unusual decision to break character and leave the “work mindset” in search of…. something.

Unsure of my destination, and even more uncertain of what was pulling me against my normal current, I heeded the call. With astonishing & unforeseen resolution, I grabbed my camera, closed my laptop, & stepped outside into the *barely* misting air.

My phone was ringing in my pocket, on my Apple Watch on my wrist, and ominously in the back of my mind. Fully aware of my commitment to future-anxiety and coworkers who would be burdened by my absent mindedness, I pressed onward. I watched the farm scape around me as if I were a bird perched in a tree. Utterly ambivalent to the high-minded, inner workings of what us humans would call “a business,” I walked mindlessly to the garden by The Stable Spa.

I normally climb over the gates if I need to enter one of these protected spaces on the farm, challenging myself to exercise a notch beyond my usual, sedentary lifestyle. Today though, I ducked low between the bottom rungs on the fence in what felt like an act of humility. Humility for something much larger & wiser than I could even stop to question. This uncalled for movement was yet another strident push against my core identity.

Almost immediately, I was overcome with the sense that life is very much like a garden.

• Life requires effort; tilling soil & planting seeds.

• Life requires patience & unknowing; waiting for the sun to grow in its power while watering and weeding.

• Life requires enjoyment; the smell of flowers tenderly grown, or the taste of an apple that you’ve just pulled down from a decades old branch.

• Life is a marvelous, magical blend of torment and joy that yields both deep rewards and deep wounds.

The microcosm of the gardens life cycle seemed like the epiphany that I was hurtling towards, until I remembered the feeling of being a bird in a tree that I’d had just minutes before. In an instant, the garden that had just felt universally large & meaningful, felt entirely small and tireless once again. The bird cares nothing about the one who labors over the garden, and I must admit that I was jealous of the bird for possessing that kind of freedom.

So I considered the bird.

If someone did not tend to the garden, (were it the job of the bird..) it would not cease being alive. The once lush garden would take a new form, certainly a less aesthetically pleasing one, but alive nonetheless. Perhaps if the garden was left unattended, it would be more alive than it had been before? Maybe new weeds would bring new bugs, new birds, new predators.. thus expanding the circle of life in a more natural way.

This is the novelty moment, if you’re a chess player. The moment where you’re playing a game that’s never been played before, you’re learning in real time with no concept of what lies ahead.

Today in the garden I learned that while it’s important to tend to your life in the ways that you’ve been programmed to, (because smelling a flower that you cared in to existence is a special reward) it’s equally important to sink into the unknown & messy places that are CALLING to you.

Of course, the garden is right next to The Spa, the epicenter for emotional challenge & change. Of course it is.

Bending down through the gate to return to my laptop, emails, phone calls, and relational atonement’s, glancing up at the stable that houses The Spa, I was smirking.

It’s all just something to do, and sometimes the lesson you learn in the garden is not the one that you wanted, but it’s the one that it knew you needed.