TOTAL READ TIME: 2.5 MINUTES
I’ve got a bit of a problem here and it’s called thistles. As a gardener who refuses to use poisonous weed killer, I’m on my hands and knees every spring, negotiating with the thistles.
I stab my knife down vertically until I can hear the satisfying “pop” of the weed coming up from its long single root. Over the past two weeks I’ve heard over a thousand pops. But unbeknownst to me, the thistles are thriving.
Underground, thistles send long horizontal runners. Thistles can pop up anywhere along its vast root network. In other words, there’s no cutting thistles down. There’s no killing them. Every time that I try to kill the thistles, the plant says no thank you. Their roots make new life points in the runners below.
In other words, I’m helping them thrive.
Have you ever been cut down, but you ended up thriving instead? Has a negative experience ever created a new life point within you?
Me too.
Sometimes in our daily routines we can forget to notice the new life points, i.e., opportunities, that are created. All we need to do is send energy there and it can pop up into the sun and flourish. Yes, circumstances may try to cut you down, but we are a thriving species.
What do you have running through your network that is begging to be born?
When we experience something that goes against our ability to thrive, it clarifies a new path. If we see something opposite of our value system, it redirects us to walk the path towards our value system.
We can easily be fooled with the illusion that life is static, programmed and predictable. I’m taking a lesson from the abundant thistle plant, realizing that there are many nodes in which I can send my energy – it may be left, right and zig zag all at once.
What is my ultimate lesson from the thistle plant? That the unpredictable, zig zag line is the best path to thriving… and likely the most fun.