What Does It Mean to Be Ready?
Planting seeds has been teaching me a lot about patience. I’ve realized that I want immediate, tangible proof that they are growing and that they'll "be okay". When I say immediate I mean like the day after I plant them. WHERE ARE THEY?!
One does not have to be a licensed psychologist to deduce how this pattern is mirrored in my relationship to my own growth as a human. I want the results now. I want to see the proof that I'm germinating and will sprout and bloom. I want to know for sure that I'll be okay.
It turns out this really just means that I want to get out of what I'm experiencing right now. I want things to be different than they are so I don't have to feel the discomfort. This is fair enough. No one likes discomfort. And we don't have to like it. Acceptance does not necessitate approval. In fact, a crucial step to changing the things we dislike is accepting that, however much we might wish they were otherwise, they are as they are.
The Only Place to Start is Here
I cannot do anything meaningful to address the climate crisis if I spend all my time wishing that it didn’t exist. I cannot meaningfully dismantle racism if I spend all my time bemoaning its existence. Do I wish these problems didn’t exist? Of course, they suck a whole lot. But they do exist, and in order to affect change I must start where I am.
When I get into the space of putting all my energy into fighting what's here, wishing it were different, bemoaning that it's not, I have very little attention or energy for actually transforming what's here - engaging with it and integrating it so that "something different" can come. It just makes my journey more painful, and probably longer.
My impatience ends up being a tool of violence against myself. It robs me of my ability to be present with what is.
I am grateful to my seeds for teaching me so lovingly and uncompromisingly. They will not sprout in order to placate my anxiety. They will not sprout until they are ready.
What Does It Mean to Be Ready?
This has also gotten me thinking a lot about what it means to be "ready". What are the criteria? How do you know if you are? Which then begs the deeper question...do you ever know??? No matter what it is you’re waiting to be “ready” for, is that desired moment of “readiness” an illusion?
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert says that all the things in the world that are beautiful and meaningful and impactful have been made by people who were not ready - who didn’t have enough time, enough resources, enough training - but were moved to make or do anyway. This resonates on some level, and…I wonder if our definition of readiness is failing us. I wonder if those people were in fact ready, they were just using a more useful definition of the experience of readiness.
Perhaps being ready and feeling ready are not the same. I wonder if the seed feels ready when it sends up it's first leaf. From everything I know about plants and the enormous risk they take in sprouting, I doubt it. It’s a leap of faith towards life, towards growth, towards potential.
A culture of False Security
I wonder if our definition of being ready has come to include feeling sure that we will succeed. Feeling sure that the risks of our leap of faith are minimal, or even non-existent. I see this with cliamte action on both structural and individual levels. We cling to what’s familiar even though it’s killling us. I see this playing out in the midst of our most recent reckoning about systemic racism and white supremacy as well. I wonder if the fear and fragility that so many white folx feel about stepping up to talk about and dismantle racism is connected to the dominant (white supremacist) culture of false security and illusory certainty. We want to know we’re going to do it right (we’re not). We want to know we’re going to be okay (we are). We don’t want to act until we’ve done everything we can to diminish the risks to ourselves (we musn’t).
For many of us, COVID-19 is initiating us into the ultimate reality of our inherent and eternal uncertainty in whole new ways. For others of us, this groundlessness is all too familiar and expected. The pull to force some kind of normality - which I think is just code for stability or certainty, however false it may be - is so present in our world right now. It's the same instinct that has me angry with my seeds for not sprouting the moment after I plant them. Fighting what’s here. Ignoring the work that is being presented to me in that moment, and instead wishing for different work.
Worrying about being ready co-opts the actual work of getting ready, of building the structures needed for sprouting and harvest. Does your metaphorical compost need some attention? Are there weeds in the garden of your life that are syphoning nutrients? There is an invitation right in front of you - what is it? We are being called in HARD by the world right now. Don’t let a crappy definition of readiness hold you back from playing your part.