"Anyone who has spent years working in a garden or in the
fields knows impermanence intimately. We see the cycle of seasons, the coming
and going of insects, droughts, freezes, rot, the seeds that sprout or die, the
life cycles of plants, the bountiful harvests and the lean. It is all change.
There is nothing that can be counted on with certainty to be exactly as it was
last year. Our only recourse is to keep on fitting what we do, adapting who we
are, to the constantly changing circumstances.
"It does no good to tell the grasshopper eating the soybean leaves, "You really
shouldn't be doing that." Wishing the rain would stop (or come) doesn't affect
the weather or the plants. Analyzing how we feel about fungus doesn't save the
cabbage. We need a more realistic perspective and straightforward action to have
a chance to effect the changes we desire.
"I am not being passive or resigned when I emphasize the changeableness of the
world and the necessity of our adapting to it. Only when we have a clear vision
of this flux and our place in it does our effort mean something. To work and
succeed and play and love while pretending it will all last, while ignoring the
fragile "momentariness" of it all, is to miss the chance for depth in all these
activities. To try while dying, to love while changing, to play while
acknowledging the impermanence allows a kind of nobility to the simplest act, to
something that was only childish escape before.
"There is nothing ennobling about suffering itself. But in striving while
suffering we move beyond ourselves to become new creatures -- whether the
striving attains what we set out to accomplish or not. Pain and self-doubt and
fear and anger don't necessarily stimulate growth, but they do permit it. When
the effort is there. Change is inevitable. In the garden; in us. Some of the
change we can influence, some we cannot. Our fundamental hope lies in affecting
the change that is us."
from David K. Reynolds' book entitled "Water Bears No Scars."
