/reader

You wait. You water. You watch.

Nothing happens.

You give up.

You figure it’s over. Bad seed. Bad soil. Too much something. Not enough something else.

Forget it.

You turn your attention away.

In silence, a tiny stem pushes through the soil. Delicate roots reach and cling. Fragile new yellow-green leaves open.

Just like that. 

12

Whatever you’ve planted that is stubbornly not cooperating: leave it alone.

Quit messing around with it.

Go ahead and give up!

You tried.

Oh well.

Face and bear the anguish of love.

Face and bear bravely your own responsibility.

(I am so proud of you.)

Sometimes we bury seeds in a garden, sometimes we bury seeds in a grave. 

13

I see your effort, your love, your heart.

Wow, what a heart.

O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red!

Now: stop hiding in martyrdom and entertainment.

Stop playing in the shallows.

Dive. Dive in. Dive the fuck in. 

Start using all that you are to be who you are.

Release all the resentment, fear, and self-pity.

It’s not about whether you’re justified. Of course you are. 

It’s about whether it helps you live.

Sometimes it does help you. Keeps you safe, or at least makes you feel safer. 

Then the walls that were a fortress become a prison. 

Time to knock ‘em down. 

You have stuff to do. 

A self-imposed rule that, for me, meant I wouldn’t post for the sole purpose of complaining about something.

Obviously, I break this rule. Have done, will do.

But the number of times I do not break this rule exceeds the number of times I break it.¹ 

You can’t know that, of course. When I don’t break it, when I stop myself from complaining because of my own rule, no one knows but me.

I’ll be busily composing a witty complaint in my head and anticipating the commiserative responses, when the spectre of my self-created, self-imposed Rules Master bops me on my figurative head (which is inside my literal head) and says in a shrill voice²: NOoooOoooOOoo complaining!

Obviously: Making a rule doesn’t stop me from doing the thing I made the rule about. I have all the power here. I make the rule, I break the rule. 

But, often, I honor the rule. The voice sounds off, I pause, I think Ugh, never mind, and I move on to something else³. If I didn’t have the rule at all, I wouldn’t be mentally pausing. There would be no friction, even imaginary. No internal voice making me feel just ever so slightly guilty.

Self-imposed rules like this add purposeful friction. They help me pause and pay attention. What do I want to do? Or not want to do? How do I want to steer my little leaky ship of behavior today? 

It’s the old what-gets-measured-gets-managed rule, just less, um, formal: I’m not going to mark on a spreadsheet or log in an app when I do or do not complain online. But if I have a little rule, I will, at least, notice. Usually.

See also: Break dumb rules

1. I think that’s accurate. I’m not really keeping track.

2. For some reason, it’s this voice and I think the rule is mostly effective because I start thinking about shrubberies instead of whatever I was complaining about.

3. Like thinking about shrubberies. Or getting myself a seasonally shaped Reese’s peanut butter cup as a treat for exhibiting such enormous self-control and moral fortitude.