Opportunities for Growth

Like a garden, life is always changing. There is always growth.
Addictions UK uses Twitter to share inspirational Thoughts every day. This article is based on one of them. Follow us at @addictionsuk.
As the Chelsea Flower Show approaches, keen gardeners are focussed on the arrival of spring and the prospect of summer.
Life is like a garden. It never stands still.
There is something deep within the human psyche that longs for stasis and permanence. If only everything, anything would stay still, we could catch it and control it.
It’s a dangerous trap. If we are tempted to wait for life to become manageable then we are just watching a vanishing mirage. It’s not going to happen.
Life will always change – circumstances, the people around us, the economy, the environment. We will never get it under control.
In a way, this scary truth brings an unexpected comfort. The unruliness that surronds each of us is not unusual or deviant, it’s the norm, a Fact of Life.
The trick with a garden is to manage, not to control. Centuries ago people tried to make formal gardens, but it was a constant battle by an army of labourers to keep out encroaching reality and, on close inspection, it was only ever an illusion.
Another of Addictions UK’s Thoughts on Twitter reminds us that “Accepting that you cannot control your addiction does need not mean that your whole life is chaos.”
We change our lives little by little, and start by preserving the good that is there already. Calling in a garden makeover team to change everything in three days only happens on the Telly. In real life, our own lives, a little pruning here, a little feeding there, and the mess starts to look more organised and the flowers among the weeds are easier to see and to encourage.
Just as with a garden, we need to accept that in life change is unavoidable, that growth can be guided and, if we can accept some help with the management, it can become beautiful.