One reason I like gardening so much is that it is a great metaphor for life. When you tend your garden well, you have a beautiful patch of flowers and healthy foods to enjoy. When you don't tend your garden, there's less to enjoy.
People have varied expectations for their gardens. Some like tight, uniform gardens that are meticulously attended to and others like a more laid-back, free garden that regularly offers surprise. As one who enjoys visiting gardens of all kinds, I appreciate the variety of gardens that exist. I don't believe there's one way to garden, yet there are some common practices that every garden profits from.
The same is true for relationships--when we tend our relationships, those relationships are generally better. Yet, like gardnening, there are many different ways to tend a relationship--it's not a one-way proposition.
How do you tend your relationships?
What common practices keep your relationships strong?
When, like a plant that won't root, do you realize that a relationship will not survive, and when do you decide to tend a relationship differently to support its survival?
Way back, there was greater uniformity to life. When I was a child many decades ago, people lived quite similarly with same work/life patterns. But today, there appears to be far more variety when it comes to how people live--there are a lot more choices about how to spend our time, energy, money and other resources too. Also, the rate of change is greater creating more variety. This variation, I believe, poses some challenges when it comes to tending relationships.
Do we tend relationships where we are mostly similar in our choices and lifestyle or do we tend relationships that vary greatly from the ways we live and choose? Is it easier to tend relationships where we are similar or is it easier to tend relationships where we differ a lot? And do we tend relationships at all or do we simply make do with the relationships we've always had with little thought or analysis?
We know that good relationships matter when it comes to the quality of life we enjoy. So I believe that it is important to consider this proposition that tending relationships is valuable and life enriching. How we tend the relationships we value will differ from person to person and place to place, but with some thought I believe we can all find a positive path in this direction. Onward.