Our Garden

All is a creation including a "meaningful" relationship between two people:

The creation of a relationship can be likened to two people coming together to create a garden. As a couple and as individuals, each in their own right contribute to the making of this garden. The garden can be intelligently cultivated or allowed to "run wild." But whether the garden is well tended or left to neglect - it will produce. What is grown in the garden is largely pre-determined, and not totally by chance. The couple will reap what they sow.

The cultivation and maintenance of the garden is critical, and requires commitment, hard work, and maturity. Weeds by their very nature quickly grow and rapidly reproduce, unchecked they will eventually choke the valuable life out of any garden. Given the harm that weeds can do, continuous vigilance is required by the couple to prevent them from infesting and over-taking their garden.

If by chance a relation-garden becomes weed infested, it can be renewed if the couple commit themselves to pulling out the weeds and replacing them with good seed. If one member intentionally or unknowingly keeps sowing weed seeds the garden will eventually become weed infested and non-life substaining. If both sow weed seeds the garden will change for the worse much sooner. Thus, the relation-garden is made or unmade by the couple.

Great care is needed with whom we choose to create a relation-garden with, for that in itself, will determine to a large extent the outcome of the garden. It is imperative that each equally understands and implements the weed/mind cultivating process of discovering, uprooting, and the disgarding of "anything" that would negatively effect their relationship.

Before we seek someone to create a relation-garden with it is best that we first prepare ourselves. If we were to compare a "seed" to a "thought" and our "mind" to our own personal "garden," we can by using the same cultivation process as mentioned above, make or unmake ourselves. For the most part, thought and character are one and the same. And, who we are and what we become is determined to a large extent by the thoughts that we choose to think and act on. All conduct, whether noble or bestial, are the blossom of thought.

"Each spring I'd sit on my backyard patio and watch my neighbors, an old old man and woman working in their garden. Good people, they would take much of what they had grown to the local food bank. Unfortunately, two winters ago his beloved wife had passed away.

Even though his beloved wife was no longer with him, the old man continued each year to work their garden. And as he toiled away I'd often hear him talking and singing to himself. It was as though his wife were still with him. For him, she was. Throughout their marriage he had held his wife in his arms and told her that he was her soulmate and wanted go through all eternity with her.

The seasons and the years passed by, one right after the other and in time; I too, matured and became an old old man..."

                        Timothy E. Stevenson 1995  ©   (revised September/2014)   Upoet.com

*The above story is a metaphor I took from the book, "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen. I just put my own spin on it regarding relationships. I highly recommend this character-building book. They now have a version, "As a Woman Thinketh." If you enjoyed the above writing and would like to learn more, please view this poem, "Thought and Relationships."