Sapling, a lesson in Zen

Amongst all the hustle and bustle of daily modern life, the speed with which people now travel from A to B, or C, or D and despite all the acquisitions people accumulate around themselves as societal symbols of wealth and success, I rarely see any real, convincing or genuine signs of satisfaction around me. Are people truly happy spending their lives the way they do?

My son was talking with me yesterday about the subject of work. This is all very relevant to me now as, after 28 years of solid parenting, I have just returned to the world of work as a self employed photographer. I took this route primarily because I wanted the freedom to continue to home-educate my youngest child without having to send her to school to enable me to go out to look for work. As it happens I could not be happier with the way things are working out, photography is something I love doing and it fits in beautifully with my life here with my family, even if it does mean sitting up till almost 3:00am some mornings getting stuff finished in the stillness that ensues once my youngest is asleep! Ah, how lovely it is to think a whole thought through undisturbed!

But, going back to my son, he felt it was preferable to get a higher paid job doing something you do not enjoy doing as spending your life doing something you enjoy doing, but having to settle for less money. I asked him if he thought money was more valuable than the life spent doing the job you do not enjoy every day. It does make me question peoples idea of success.

Success to me means something different. It means spending our lives as if they are the most valuable commodity we have ~ far more precious than anything we could possibly buy. I was saying to my daughter only today that no amount of money, no enormous win on the lottery would ever be able to buy her back should anything ever happen to her. This following an impromptu road safety lesson on the walk to Tesco, along a very busy main road. Which is where I came across this little sycamore sapling, my entry for today, growing away, minding its own business on a tiny patch of largely uncultivated no man's land.

It did not need any special soil preparation, or fertilisers to grow, it just needed an opportunity. It did not even think about taking it ~ once the right conditions presented themselves it just burst forth on its journey from seed to sapling to tree. It exists simply because it does. Something so small, yet at the point at which that seed germinated, it had the capacity, the potential (something like 4 atmospheres of pressure, I once read) to break through asphalt. The only goal it has is to grow. To flourish. If it fails to grow or flourish, it simply dies. Returns to the earth. Much like we do eventually. But that sycamore, I am sure, does not have a day go by when it is not completely satisfied to be what it is.

Ah, I perhaps hear you say, but human life is not as simple as that. Why not? Because the more we want, the more complex it becomes. The more we want, the more we end up undertaking those jobs that are not satisfying to the soul and, somehow, growth becomes stunted. There is a general dissatisfaction that replaces simple joy.

I look at that sapling and I thank my lucky stars that my life is simple enough to still allow me plenty of room to appreciate these little miracles, hidden away, every day of my life. To enjoy my life and to be happy just as I am.