Today, I’m pondering another lesson from the garden. While I was traveling, my garden was taken over by grass and weeds. Since then, downpours have given them the perfect amount of moisture and they are thriving!
When I first returned, I took a weeding fork and pulled the weeds up and left them to die. That is not what happened. Today, it looked like they had rerooted themselves and doubled in volume and size. Obviously, I needed to remove the grass and weeds by the roots and remove them from the garden.
Because of recent rains, the soil was holding together well. I tried to shake dirt clumps from the weed’s roots, but much of that dark, rich, moist soil traveled over the fence with them. It was painful to see soil I’d recently added to the space fly out of the environment.
My choices were to leave the weeds in the garden, spend an extra hour reclaiming the soil, or feel the sting of watching it leave the garden. Yes, I could have put it in the bucket to reclaim later, but if I had that time available any time soon, I’d have done it right then.
I tossed weeds, grass, and clinging soil into the yard. Once I’d made that decision, I could focus on the loss of fertile soil to the garden or view it as good food for the yard.
This process reminded me of a conversation I had with a 5-year-old last week about telling the truth. They insisted they hadn’t kicked someone. I saw the kick. I told them I saw the kick so that story wasn’t going to fly. There was some screaming, stomping, and tears which led to blaming the person they kicked for making them do it. Once things calmed down, we discussed why it’s important to tell the truth.
As we noted, telling a lie may be faster and less complicated than telling the truth. It’s like my first stab at weeding. The problem is, I ended up with a more difficult job this time around.
Lying is the same. The temporary effects are rarely worth the long-term consequences of eroding trust, undermining goals, and preventing progress. We get ourselves lost in the weeds.
Turning perceived failures, relationship difficulties, and workplace conflicts around in our minds until we’re lying to ourselves is a common adult manifestation of the 5-year-old’s behavior. It serves the purpose of diminishing pain, keeping us out of trouble temporarily, and providing the option of convincing ourselves someone else is to blame.
But the ultimate result will be no different than that in my garden. The entanglements will grow, multiply, and thrive. In the long run that is detrimental.
Finding the courage and strength to face pain, difficulty, and loss directly is the equivalent of me facing reality and tossing grass back into the yard where it belongs without removing garden soil because I know I can’t allot the time to do it. Is it annoying? Yes. Does it pain me? Yes. Is it the best way to avoid the same problem in the future? Yes. Can I do it? Yes.
Obviously, garden soil doesn’t carry as much emotional impact as other things. But I recently had the experience of participating in a conversation in which the other person, let’s call him Bob, turned a situation entirely around in his mind from what we had both experienced, discussed, and agreed about two weeks before.
The incident was a business negotiation between Bob and a potential client. There was nothing egregious in the original transaction. Annoying? Yes. But immoral, illegal, or unheard of? No.
Two weeks ago, Bob was clear he had provided less than clear communication to the potential client leaving her guessing and also implying she was doing something wrong without stating any specific objection.
In our more recent conversation, Bob believed he had been crystal clear and the potential client had treated him terribly. Because of this, he did not believe she deserved to have her phone calls returned. In addition, he had poisoned the water with other colleagues she could have hired.
Bob has revised the story into something I don’t recognize, and I was there for the initial negotiations. I don’t know if he does this often, but it makes me view his stories in a whole new light. Will I ever take them at face value again? I’m not sure.
His credibility with me is damaged because I saw him kick (figuratively) the potential client and then say it was her fault. It’s the same behavior I observed with the 5-year-old.
To repeat because it bears repeating, the ultimate result of taking the easy way out and avoiding painful truths will be no different than using the easy way to weed my garden. The entanglements will grow, multiply, and thrive. In the long run that is detrimental.
