To dwell is to garden

Maybe I’ll never get over this damn thing. My Achilles heel. We’ve all got one or a few some. Maybe it’s not something that’s meant to be overcome. It’s not a demon you’re supposed to defeat and never deal with for the rest of your days. Instead of this being just a weakness to try to exterminate, maybe it only has to be overcome today, and every single day, individually. And the greatness you’re looking for lies in this alone. Not in the definite elimination of your demons, for if you did, you’d have no opponents to face.

The gardener, for instance, wakes up every day, determined to catch that damn snake that lurks about, sabotaging and messing up the garden. The snakes are the polarity that the gardener needs to spark the wonder that such chemistry can potentially produce.
A perfect, eternally flourishing garden with no spoiling soil, wild thorny twigs, insects and animals lurking for a potential feast, no weather conditions to account for, what’s the point? How could the gardener develop all the neat tricks without the knowledge and experience that come from the natural chaos of gardening? One is even tempted to say that without that chaos and entropy, there is no gardening, for the thrill and joy of cultivating a beautiful garden that bears delicious fruit is the struggle itself. The juicy, delicious product of your garden is ―no pun intended― the fruit of your labor.

So too, this applies to our lives. You are the gardener, your life is the garden, and your bad habits, demons, and darkness, are the potential fertilizers that come from being alive; from having a body and a mind that must cater to the physio-psychological whims that come from a beating heart that constantly longs for the newest, latest, fastest, greatest things; a wild appetite that confuses happiness with the next best thing. All of this is what makes up the practice of cultivating a beautiful garden― a good life.

Don’t wish for the extermination of your demons, for they are no obstacles, but the potential fertilizer to your growth. And the only way to cultivate a beautiful garden is by accepting an eternal battle with the snakes. Instead of hating your darkness, repressing it only to be overpowered by it, maybe the way to go is to accept it, welcome its inevitability, and befriend it. Incorporate it into your life and try to use the dark power of it for something good. A constant battle where at times you’ll be subdued by it, then it’ll be subdued by you, then you’ll be at peace, and it’ll repeat, but never cease to exist.