“If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.”
According to the latest WHO life expectancy rates, if I am lucky I have roughly 30 years left above ground, give or take. I may live longer. American health care may become better and more affordable. Still, who knows what the quality of my life may be by then or near after, and if I will even be able to do things like putter about in my garden.
Would I like to live longer? Of course–as long as I’m not stuck in a bed starting at a ceiling. Yet now that I’ve reached another so called milestone of life (home ownership), I’m more aware of the passing of seasons and my age in general, which I’m sure was only deepened by the ongoing pandemic with all the losses of both life and formerly healthy bodies that are still happening even as I write this. I write this not to be morbid or as another reminder we are living in interesting times, but because in truth even though there are days I curse humanity for all its bad things…I still hold out hope we will thrive in better ways.
It’s one of the reasons why I have chosen the path I have with gardening. I’ve focused on both successfully growing kitchen crops and trying to understand and better incorporate native species as well. It’s also why I seek out more knowledge related to but also beyond our small garden, and volunteer my time and knowledge to share with others as well.
It’s also one of the reasons why I laugh at myself. Because although each year most of my ridiculously optimistic garden plans get waylaid, if I’m alive long enough to grumble at myself for what I did not achieve–it also means that I still have a chance to live yet another year. Another year to get another step towards those plans, to try to do better not just for myself, but for my community and its small part in our vast world.
So why not laugh at my overly hopeful shortcomings, as I look ahead at possibility?
