The Garden

All is a creation including a meaningful relationship between two people. The relationship can be likened to two people getting together to create a garden. As a couple and as individuals, each in their own right contribute to the making of this garden. This garden can be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild, but whether the garden is well tended or left to neglect: it will produce. What is grown in the garden is largely pre-determined, and not totally by chance. The couple will reap what they sow.

The cultivation and maintenance of the garden is critical, and requires commitment and effort. Weeds by their very nature quickly grow and rapidly reproduce, unchecked they will eventually choke the valuable life out of any garden. Given the harm that weeds can do, continuous vigilance is required by the couple to prevent them from infesting and over-taking the garden.

If by chance a garden becomes weed infested, it can be renewed if the couple commit themselves to pulling out the weeds and replacing them with good seed. If one member intentionally or unknowingly keeps sowing weed seeds the garden will eventually become weed infested and non-life substaining. If both sow weed seeds the garden will change for the worse much sooner. Thus, the garden is made or unmade by the couple.

All gardens, like all relationships, can be placed on a left-to-right spectrum. Left being unhealthy and right being healthy. By taking the time to observe and study this range, a couple can learn and decide what type of garden they want. For this reason alone, all gardens, from good to bad are held up to much public scrutiny.

Great care is needed with whom we choose to create a garden with, for that in itself, will determine to a large extent the outcome of the garden. It is imperative that each equally understands and implements the weed/mind cultivating process of: discovering, uprooting, and disgarding that which is relationship defeating.

Before we seek someone to create a garden with there is the need first to prepare ourselves. If we were to compare a "seed" to a "thought" and our "mind" to our own personal "garden," we can by using the same cultivation process as mentioned above, make or unmake ourselves. Who we are and what we become is determined to a large extent by the thoughts that we choose to think and act on. Thus associating ourselves with right-thought, effort, and behaviour is imperative.

Loving relationships that last are one’s in which each person involved cares and brings out the best in the other.

*The above is a metaphor I took from the book, "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen. I just put my own spin on it regarding relationships. I highly recommend this character-building book. They now have a version, "As a Woman Thinketh." If you enjoyed the above writing and would like to learn more, please view this poem, "Thought and Relationships."

Timothy E. Stevenson   1995©
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