How and Where Does Your Garden Grow?

Are you a peach attempting to grow in a banana field instead of an orchard?

On a whim, I placed one of the extra copies of my book, “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, but I Have Something to Say,” in the laundry room of my building. A woman I speak with every time we meet up was who found it, and apparently, just when she needed to. She’s still reading it because she gets to a passage, then turns to her husband to discuss it.

The purpose of the book has always been to invite readers to consider the content and make their own decision about it. Though I’ve heard from many that it changed their lives in some way, my neighbor’s comments touched me deeply. She had a particular medical situation enter her life when she was 27. Since that time, this very outgoing woman continued to move herself more and more out of society and into a quiet life with her husband. Her condition causes her to blip out of “reality” from time-to-time, but she’s come to realize very specific events initiate this.

As we spoke, she told me a therapist labeled her as one who lives in something of an alternate reality. I laughed and said, “I can just imagine what he’d think about me!” Hers is the classic case of growing up in a family and societal circle that believes reality is one way only. Her “problem” is that she was always aware that this isn’t so, just like many of us running around on the planet who function as “normal” people, but consider ourselves spiritual or metaphysical. She’s psychic, sensitive, and aware of something larger going on outside what most believe as real. She’s a rose attempting to bloom in a cactus garden.

Stephen Covey said, “Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.” My neighbor has reached a turning point where she’s reassessing this very thought. She’s been metaphorically attempting to grow in the wrong garden. Not realizing her alternatives, she created a coping mechanism that allowed her to enter a different reality considered “acceptable” as a medical condition. I shared with her that this is not so strange, that some will choose to die rather than make a significant life change.

Hers is but one example. Leo Buscaglia once spoke about how some people are peaches amongst people who prefer bananas. I paraphrase, but he asked, “How much energy would you, as a peach, have to expend to become a banana in order to please them?” Some spend a portion of their lives doing this very thing. Others spend their entire lives at it. You can see how this scenario creates not only frustration, but wastes energy and personal power.

When we place ourselves in environments and amongst others where we flourish, we create the means to share the gift of ourselves and our talents. If you feel you’re in the wrong “garden,” reassess, make a plan, then take the first step.