The sneaky persistence of seeds

What if we gave ourselves permission to be where we are right now?

As much as I hate weeding, there is a simplicity to it. Before, your garden is full of weeds. After, it’s not. Tangible, if temporary, results. I can see that my garden is, for this brief, glorious moment, free of weeds. Mostly free of weeds. I’m not the most meticulous of weeders.

Cleaning is the same way. Or washing dishes. You can stand back, hands on your hips, and survey the fruits of your labor with great satisfaction. You don’t ask yourself—are the dishes really clean? You can see them. They may be dirty again in a matter of minutes, but at the moment, your success is clear and unambiguous.

So much of the work I do feels more like planting seeds than weeding. It’s incremental and slow. Think of everything you have to do before you even put a seed in the ground. You build the raised bed or plow up the ground. Prepare the soil, which is sometimes the work of years. Dig a hole or a furrow. Drop in the seeds and wait. It’s weeks before you know if any of it worked and even longer before you actually get to enjoy the fruits (literal or otherwise) of your labor.

Teaching is like that—incremental and slow, with the end results often invisible. Every now and then you get to see brief flashes of the changes that might be happening with your students. But most of the time, it’s a slog in the dark. You show up, do your thing, hope that something about what you said penetrated the fog of their lives.

Writing is also mostly a slog in the dark. A couple weeks ago, I did an online event for a bookstore which was livestreamed. I don’t understand the exact technology of it, but this meant that I couldn’t see anyone I was talking to. I spent an hour sitting at my desk, smiling and gesturing at a blank screen and for all I know, it was just me and the two women from the bookstore who were organizing the event. For all I knew, I was speaking to the void.

I can’t think of a better metaphor for writing (or teaching). You spend hours and weeks and years creating these people and worlds out of words.¹ You construct sentences that perfectly convey what you want to say, like ink boats to carry your fragile heart out in the world. But is anyone listening? Is anyone paying attention? What’s the point? Are you doing anything more than speaking to the void?

Here’s the thing about seeds, though—they are both sneaky and miraculous. I’ve planted lettuce and spinach seeds for cold crops in the fall that never came up, only to magically appear come the spring. In the fall sometimes, I scratch bulbs into the dry hard dirt and forget about them, only to notice a new and amazing iris growing in my garden next May. Bulbs shut away in the dark of our garage or a cupboard will still push out slender, green shoots, without light or water or soil.

These monster Mexican sunflowers began as seeds and now they’re taller than the church steeple. Seriously.

Seeds travel—on the wind and carried by animals. There’s a weed that thrives in our garden and if you brush by it in the fall, your clothes are covered with thin stickers that make you look like a porcupine and have to be picked off one-by-one. Those are seeds! Observe the sneakiness and persistence!

Seeds are stubborn, but they take their own time. You can’t rush them. The beets will come up when they’re damn good and ready and not one moment before. The hard part is to be okay in the waiting.

That’s what I’m thinking about this Labor Day weekend. I’m asking myself, what if I believed that I’ve already planted so many seeds and what I need to do now is have faith that they will grow in their own time? What if instead of feeling like a failure as a teacher or a writer, I acknowledged the steady work I’ve already done? What if I was okay with where I am right now, enjoying the seeds that have come to fruition and trusting that in time, there will be more to come? What if I gave myself permission to be where I am right now? What would that look like?

Maybe it’s an odd metaphor for September, but I’m going with it.

What seeds are you watching and waiting for this season?

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Along the theme of giving yourself permission to be where you are right now, check out this from Lisa Olivera at Human Stuff about not needing to be the best at anything and this from Jaime Attenburg at Craft Talk about comparison in the signing line at book festivals or this from Life in the Real World about seeing what’s there. I’m also very into the Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast lately and September is all about permission and being enough.

1. Years, friends. Years and years. I started writing the YA novel I’m still trying to get published in March 2020. I started sending it out in early 2021. Even if an agent said yes, they want to represent it tomorrow, it would still be at least another two years before it ever hit a bookstore shelf. And that’s a big ‘if.’ That’s a slow-growing seed.