Planting a seed on my 38th birthday: (Re)learning to love the process
On the morning of my 38th birthday (March 12th, 2022), I sat down to a birthday tarot reading. I use tarot to glean insights into the evolution of the last year, and how to enter my 39th revolution around the sun. My reading solidified and affirmed the learnings of the past 12 months: Move slowly and intentionally. Allow for ease and spaciousness. Plant and tend to the “sacred seeds”. Trust - and revel - in the process of growth and evolution.
I remember, years ago, learning about monks who take weeks to painstakingly push tiny colored grains of sand into intricate mandala designs, only to wipe them away shortly thereafter. I had a hard time understanding, even after seeing it myself when visiting Southeast Asia. I couldn’t believe that anyone could bear to make this beautiful art that wasn’t a tangible thing to hold at the end, to put on the wall, to marvel at. I regarded the whole thing with a mix of horror and fascination. Eventually, I learned that the mandala making was a form of meditation, and of expressing a deep relationship with the process of creating something and not with the something itself. At the time, I didn’t know what it meant to be in process with something; the outcome felt like the goal. It felt painful and itchy and raw to be in the messy part - to be shape shifting and confronting obstacles and stumbling forward.
I continued to struggle with this until I finally saw that It wasn’t actually the skill of being in process that I had to learn. Instead, I had to heal the part of myself that was conditioned to need immediate results, and to want to avoid the sometimes painful process of getting there. For the monks, the very act of creating the mandalas was an act of healing - revolutionary, really, in a world obsessed with instant gratification and stuff.
In more recent years, I’ve been working my way through this sort of healing, partly because I keep taking on things that require me to; things that require that I be a gardener, planting seeds and allowing space for the sapling to emerge. While my conditioning still wants success quickly, I’ve been working on sitting with the discomfort that comes up in the germinating, in the tending, and in the waiting. I’ve been doing the heart work required to be in relationship with (and even love) the process. I am sowing sacred seeds that might not bear fruit for some time. I am putting them in the ground, and waiting, allowing the seeds to grow at their own pace, in their own way. I am both holding a vision for what’s to come, and relinquishing control at the same time.
Here are the seeds I am planting as I enter my 39th year:
1. My son. Parenting is the ultimate seed sowing. We plant words, new foods, ideas, facts, and love inside our children. We don’t know what it means or how it will manifest. We keep planting, day after day, moment after moment.
2. My family. We are looking to grow our family, and so are planting a very literal seed: The relationships our children will have, and an unborn child’s potential to make an impact on the world.
3. My business. Vulnerably and humbly, I’ve set a three year vision for myself and each day put one foot in front of the other to work towards it - and towards greater alignment personally and professionally.
4. My relationships. Often the last seeds we tend, I find that my close relationships need perennial attention. It’s a lifetime of process to deepen our connection and intimacy with our partners and friends.
5. My community. I’m at a time in my life when I want to deepen my existing relationships and expand my community with intention, building new friendships that bring fulfillment and joy. Building new friendships as an adult takes persistence, and so, so much patience.
So this year - I am a gardener, watering, tending. Watching. Monitoring conditions. Fertilizing, watching. Protecting. Watching. Waiting. Noticing how it feels to sow a sacred seed. Waiting for bloom.
