Life Is a Messy Process

Life is a process

Statue of lady in cone hat amidst bright blue cornflowers, calendulas and fennel. — A messy but pretty patch at Evergreen. Every garden is a process. Every life is a process

Nature seems messy.

When I go for my daily walk past coastal karris, red flowering gums, marri, yate and paperbarks, interspersed with low bushes, dead leaves, sticks, strips of bark and fallen tree limbs, it strikes me that this stretch of bushland needs tidying up.

An army of workers armed with chainsaws, backhoes and giant rakes could make it a lot neater and prettier. Less wild and unkempt.

To me a fallen tree limb in a forest is unfinished business. I don’t like unfinished business. The limb needs to be dragged away, turned into mulch and then sold at a profitable price.

However, wise nature says to me:

My dear, if the tree limb is left where it is, it provides homes for marsupials, insects, snakes and birds. It shades the ground beneath and beside it, enabling the soil to retain moisture. And as it slowly dissolves into the earth over the decades, it becomes a source of nourishment for future growth.

This bush has been here for centuries, unfolding in its own way, evolving and surviving without any help from me and heavy machinery.

What can I learn from how nature does things?

The Urge to Tidy Up My Life and Garden

This urge I have to tidy up nature is reflected in my desire to tidy up life.

I want everything in my life to look perfect, with nothing out of place. I want people to say what I’ve mentally scripted for them. I want others to follow my stage directions gladly and with precision so their life and mine turn out how I think they should.

I have the same urge when I garden.

To be perfect, my garden should have trimmed edges, eye-catching topiary, flowers always in full bloom and skies that are a beautiful baby blue with a puffy white cloud here and there. There must be no fallen leaves, overly long blades of grass, lop-sided fence posts, or holes in the spinach made by voracious slugs.

Everything must be pristine.

Life and Gardens Are Messy

But real life and gardens are messy.

There are disasters, wars, and political unrest. Breadwinners lose jobs. Children get sick. Interest rates go up. People spill coffee, dent other people’s cars, buy dud blenders and invest in homes with faulty plumbing.

Weeds grow. Slaters and snails nibble things they shouldn't. The wind blows an old tree down. A prized rose dies. An arch rusts and snaps in half. Jerusalem artichokes stage a take-over in a raised garden bed.

Wooden plank forms a garden seat in a crop of orange pumpkins. — What a mess! Ripening pumpkins, dying leaves, invading grass, wobbly seat.

Never a day goes by that more mess isn’t made.

Life – most of the time – seems to be one big mess.

Nevertheless, if I learn a lesson from nature, I’ll realise that what seems to be a mess is just a process.

My garden is a process.

My life is a process.

Other people's lives are a process.

If I think that someone’s life is turning into a mess, that is just my point of view. Good things will come out of the muddle. It will probably take longer than I think it should. It may even get messier and look like a tornado raced through their life. But it’s their life, not mine. I need to keep my tools out of the garden that is their life and let them get on with figuring it out for themselves.

As George Bernard Shaw quipped:

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Creating anything is a messy process, whether it be a painting, a suit of clothes, a cottage garden or an interesting life..

The wonderful stretch of natural bushland I walk past every day is busy quietly creating itself. It didn’t miraculously appear, pristine and perfect. In fact, it will never be pristine. But it is always perfect, in its own way.

And everyone’s life, no matter how messy it may seem, is perfect, in its own way.

Life is a perfect, messy process.

Of course, realising this doesn’t prevent me from planning, organising and altering aspects of my life or digging and rearranging my garden – it just makes me calmer and more peaceful as I accept the broader, deeper meaning of existence.

I’ll take some advice from Lady Bird Johnson:

My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery,

order and disorder of the flowering earth.