An Ode to 33 Years Around the Sun
I captured this magnificent cherry tree in blossom in May 2019 at Urban Roots Garden Center in Buffalo, NY
May 8, 2020
Today I turn 33 and I thought, what better way to express my gratitude than share words that have had great influence on my life.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is to not only learn from my own experiences, but from what other people have experienced, too. I am an avid reader and have collected the words of others for years, carrying them around with me as keepsakes when I need them most.
Here’s to a new year of life filled with nature’s gifts.
On gratitude, a reading from our wedding:
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. My breath is sweet to me. Oh, how I laugh when I think of my vague, indefinite riches! No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”
On conviction:
“I decided to start anew - to strip away what I had been taught - to accept as true my own thinking.”
On growth:
“Like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people never thought you would.”
On respect, from my grandma:
“If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.”
On productivity:
“Done is better than good.”
On commitment:
“How much we are the fires we tend, the bread we bake, the gardens we plant along our paths, the love we nurture and share. How much tending they take. But what warmth, what nourishment, what joy they bring, and give, and preserve for the next day and the day after that, if we care to turn an ember into a spark.”
On stewardship:
“We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.”
On nature:
“And the scientists, no matter how much they investigate nature, no matter how far they research, they only come to realize in the end how perfect and mysterious nature really is. To believe that by research and invention humanity can create something better than nature is an illusion.”
On sharing knowledge:
“When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest. When you teach the people, you will reap one hundred harvests.”
On following dreams:
“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
On unconditional love, from our wedding song:
“That’s how you live free, truly see and be seen.”
On living truthfully:
“You can be a musician, an accountant, or a sexy powerful creative beast — but you have to be yourself first.”
On believing in yourself:
“You have no idea how high I can fly.”
On vulnerability:
“The garden has found its voice and is speaking to me just as, sometimes, in rooms that have been locked up a long time, old pieces of furniture suddenly speak to us at critical moments in our experience. For we inevitably extend our own lives to the inatimate objects ... that we think of daily.
Then when the strength of some emotion makes us feel how small and weak we are, or when we need advice or help, we turn instinctively to this world that is both familiar to us and strange; and at a stroke it gives us back the life we have lent it from day to day.”
On openheartedness:
“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires.”
On contentment, from my favorite book:
“‘And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?’ he asked.
[…]
‘Forever,’ he said.”
On consumption & action:
“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.”
On inner fire:
“You were wild once. Don’t let them tame you.”
On saying no:
“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”
On expressing individuality:
“PROTEST AGAINST THE RISING TIDE OF CONFORMITY”
On accepting responsibility:
“Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.”
On failure:
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
On being present:
“I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain.”
On transformation, from my favorite poem:
“All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”
On sense of place:
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
On seeing beyond what’s in front of you:
“An Onondaga elder once explained to me that plants come to us when they are needed. If we show them respect by using them and appreciating their gifts they will grow stronger. They will stay with us as long as they are respected. But if we forget about them, they will leave.”
