Life is Like That…

It is springtime in the city although you would never know it by the amount of snow on the ground. My garden I have worked so hard to get just where I want it to be is, according to my garden helper, “not working anymore, dear”. In spite of my best efforts, my garden is “old and tired and badly in need of a change,” she says. I fume and fuss and threaten to revoke her gardening helper status.
The prospect of change, however necessary and exciting to my “helper”, is definitely not helpful to me, or so I think. Redesign of my carefully constructed garden to create something new? I don’t think so!
Life is like this garden of mine. We arrive where we planned to get to and find it is “not working anymore, dear”. Just when we have trained all the ducks to line up in a row, the old formation doesn’t work anymore and we are expected to make a new kind of duck formation.
Sometimes something happens and a perfectly good formation is scattered to the winds of change. Life is like that. Change is inevitable – profound, unwelcome and often inexplicable.
For most of us, somewhere in the middle years, we find the carefully tended garden that is our life ‘in need of change”. It is as if one day we find ourselves in a job, a relationship, a community or an entire life that no, longer works for us. The still small “helper” voice within starts with a whisper moves to a whine and ends up shouting, “it’s not working.” Life is like that, just when you think you got it right, change comes calling.
In my Inside-Out life coaching practice I see and work with many people in their middle years struggling to find their ground again as the winds of change blew through their life and continue to do so.
What do we do when our life is calling for change? We listen. We stop resisting and stop scaring ourselves with fear of the unknown and just listen. It is not the unknown that scares us but what we think we know about the unknown that freezes us.

What if a call to change, to move into the unknown is a blessing? What if the call to change is an opportunity to redesign the carefully constructed garden of our life? What if we are being directed on a path that will provide the way to cultivate and nourish only what we truly love at this time in our life and let go of the rest? Perhaps let go of the past and what is not working anymore.
What if this is our chance is to cut back old growth and plant new seeds?
How would our life be new again if we cut out the weeds that are choking the life out and create space for something new and wonderful to grow?
I hope you are listening garden “helper”. What’s good for the garden is good for the girl. I took your advice and recreated my garden. I have a wonderful new thriving garden with some cherished old favourites, a few brand new beauties and lots of space for new and exciting stuff to come.
It is working now…dear!
Life is like that