Our conscious choice
Whoever tended this garden made a choice that brightened the day for me and many others.
Mission San Juan Capistrano, California, July 2004
“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we shall tend.”
— Sarah Ban Breathnach
Every day I wake up with a mixture of thoughts, some pleasant and some not. There are always things I look forward to doing that day, and things I dread. It’s much easier to get up and go about my day cheerfully — or at least without complaining to myself — when I focus on the good things. Ruminating over unhappy thoughts does not start my day well. Every day, I get to choose which way I start out.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to learn this simple lesson, but it is.
How did you feel when you woke up this morning? Were you grateful to have been granted another day? Or did you get up with a sigh (as I do, too often) thinking of all the tasks still undone that were awaiting you?
Here’s a challenge: let’s tend our mental gardens, those secret places where we spend time when no one is looking. If we don’t make sure to water the flowers and pull up the weeds, it’s likely to become a place that isn’t so cheerful.
So take care of the garden of your mind — where Mr. Rogers reminds us that we can grow all kinds of ideas — and let me know what’s looking good today! Maybe we can even send each other some virtual seeds.
One year ago today:
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
Defeat Despair 