We all have talents, don’t we? I’m often envious of those who can coax a
dying plant to life, or who have greenery and colour blooming aggressively
throughout their homes. These gifted
souls are often blessed with the title “green thumb”.
That person is not me.
Plants see me coming, and die to save themselves the agony of my
ministrations. I impressed myself this
year and kept a mother’s day plant alive for about six weeks – I think that’s
my record.
Until recently, I said I inherited this “black thumb” from
my own mother. Illustrations of this talent are legion, but this one is among
the funniest.
Many years ago, some unknowing soul gifted my mother with a
cactus. This is legitimately called the
bunny ear or polka dot cactus, and rightly so.
When she got the cactus, it was about 5” tall and looked like a
bunny. Round, two ears sticking up. (You know what a bunny looks like.) She thought the cactus was cute and put it in
a window. She glued googly eyes one
it. The poor cactus had no idea that
this was the first harbinger of its death.
All of that went fairly well. Except that the cactus then started, well, …growing. While one would typically consider this a
good thing, it was not to the cactus’ own benefit to grow. It sprouted extra ears, but as (non-mutant)
bunnies only have two ears, she broke them off.
After all, its merit was in the fact that the cactus looked like a
bunny. The cactus didn’t get the point
quickly. It kept growing extra ears – on
its back, on its face, and even on its (permitted) ears. In fact – it grew ears anywhere there was a
polka dot, of which there were many. All
were removed.
I don’t recall how long the cactus survived this
experimental and impromptu surgical series, but it did eventually leave its
life of suffering and died.
Some forty years later, there are all kinds of plants in my
mother’s house. As I’m still a black
thumb, I’m not even going to try and name them.
Some are large and others are smaller, but the one commonality is that
they are all thriving. (Also, none of
them have googly eyes.) She’s got these
pretty glass balls on sticks that automatically water the plants – she just
needs to fill the balls, and apparently she does as the plants are not
dead.
To me, it’s a rather interesting metamorphosis, and it
leaves me with some small hope that someday I too may be able to keep a plant
alive rather than killing by alternate neglect and over-watering. I suspect that’s still some distance in the
future.
But while this story is a funny one, like most things, it
includes a lesson. We are all
individuals. We all have intrinsic attributes
that aren’t likely to change – certainly not in a positive sense by way of outside
intervention. When we try to
aggressively change who, hide, or remove aspects of another person (or even our
own at times), we’re removing ears from the cactus. While those removals maintained the cactus’
bunny look, they ultimately killed it.
And while removing or changing a person may not kill them, it tends to
have poor effects over the long term.
Removing what doesn’t fit to accommodate the intended vision is often
not a good thing.
Change comes from within, and to be effective and
long-lasting, it needs to come from the person who’s affected. The cactus’ extra ears were signs of its good
health – they just didn’t fit the picture my mother had for it at the
time. We don’t get to dictate what makes
another person healthy. But we can
support and love them. We can do that
for ourselves, too. It’s ok not to
confirm to a pre-set model. As a matter
of fact, it’s probably a good thing.
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