How to grow mental clarity

Dear reader,

My favorite garden flowers are lilies. The blossoms are gorgeous, but even more than that, I love the fragrance.

This April I went all-out and bought three potted Easter lilies for the house. After they were done blooming I planted them out in the garden, in early May.

Then we got our last hard frost of the season.

Lilies are a summer flower. The nursery I bought these from had “forced” the flowers to bloom for Easter.

The lilies froze and wilted. I assumed they were dead and kicked myself for neglecting their needs.

But lilies are bulbs. The below-ground part is harder to kill.

About two months went by and they sprouted back. I felt relieved.

Then relief became delight. In the last few weeks they formed flower buds and are now blooming. Easter lilies in October!

In 2019, Vermont began recognizing the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day, rather than Columbus Day.

So for this year I’ll consider these “Indigenous Peoples Day Lilies.” Echoing Easter as a celebration of rebirth, I’m happy to participate in the resurgence in recognition of the Abenaki and other native people as?a living culture .

***

I’m more shy about sharing happy stories from my life with you, reader, as opposed to hard ones. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m bragging and you won’t like me anymore. Or that you’ll feel schadenfreude.

Preamble, caveat, blah blah blah… here we go...

This last Sunday at midnight. It’s raining. We’ve just taken a two-hour flight into Hartford and have been driving home for an hour-and-a-half. On the way home we have to drop a loaner car off at the garage and pick up our Prius which has been fixed after two weeks.

The “garage” is a mom-and-pop operation out of their home in a so-called hilltown in Western Mass. We’re in their pitch-black, rain-soaked driveway.

I open the trunk of our car to receive our luggage. While I’m doing that, my girlfriend opens the trunk on the loaner to take the luggage out.

As she’s starting to grab the luggage, I come over and hold the trunk open for her. The trunk on the loaner car is busted and doesn’t hold itself open. I’m afraid she doesn’t know that and it’s going to fall on her head.

What I don’t know, or don’t realize, is that she’s already observed the trunk issue and factored that into how she was handling the bags.

So my gesture of holding it not only doesn’t do her any good. It also insults her intellect and makes it look like I’m going for the easy job.

She says, “So you’re going to let me carry all the bags? Thanks a lot!” Dripping with sarcasm.

I reply, “Don’t talk to me that way! I just didn’t want the trunk hitting your head.”

We figured out the luggage, got home safely, and laughed later about this exchange.

...That’s it, that’s the story. The reason I tell it to you is that 99% of the time my girlfriend and I have really emotionally “clean” communication. If one of us is annoyed or angry with the other, we’ll say it directly.

Like any couple we’ll get irritated with each other about something that should have been clear to the other person—if we were reading the other person’s mind perfectly.

But most of the time we’ll express this directly and work it out. No sarcasm needed.

What I noticed is that when one of us does go passive-aggressive (or aggressive-aggressive), I notice it right away and call her out on it, or call myself out on it. As I did the other night. And vice versa.

In contrast, I’ve had other relationships where I’ve been so neck-deep in unhealthy communication 20 times a day that it becomes impossible to call out any one situation and unpack it openly.

When we become surrounded by ugliness, we un-see?it . We don’t even notice it consciously.

It also becomes overwhelming to try to address any one thing. When you’re walking?around?eggshells , the eggshells have a way of multiplying. Conflicts come up in part because we actually want to be more in harmony. We want to come together and heal. We want to know if the other person is paying attention and if we can trust them.

So we test each other’s boundaries. When we encounter a tense situation and avoid it, another tends to present itself. And they build.

I appreciate the mental clarity of not having any backlog of tense situations with my girlfriend to process. My mind and heart are clear to notice when something is off and to address it right away.

***

I feel kinda bad for the lily. Rather than putting out a second set of blossoms this fall, it would probably be healthier in the long run if it saved that energy for next summer.

But why should I feel bad? I see it and appreciate it.

Likewise I don’t feel bad about the incident with the trunk. I see and appreciate the opportunity to exercise clarity and love in communication.

Overall I’ve done a lot of work in the last 12 months to set down old conflicts and address eggshells that I was previously walking around. I appreciate the clarity this provides.

Reader, what’s an eggshell that you’re devoting mental shelf space to walking around? Try appreciating it as a chance to clarify boundaries, and love. Try seeing it, and then seeing how your mind clears up that much more as a result.

I see you,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm

P.S. Here are some invasive buckthorn saplings that I yanked out of the ground the other day. There were a dozen or more sprouting in a ditch. Some seeds must have washed there from a bear poop, and taken root. While I have complex feelings about so-called invasive?species , I’ve decided to root out buckthorn when I can. It’s another exercise in seeing something clearly, and addressing it. My capacity can grow in this way.

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