24. Self-Love for Nature

They say, love is the way of living, and I can't agree more! One morning, it dawned on me – love for everything means love for nature, that's what everything around us is. If we love nature, we should love ourselves as part of it.

Love for ourselves includes the desire to be lovable and blossom beautifully, but the best success is to bear nutritious fruits that ripen over time and become valuable, so that we can be appreciated.

Many like to meet a saguaro cactus in a desert but no one wants to hug it. 

I think becoming gardeners of our most attractive qualities is the truest self-love there could be. We should discover what seeds we carry within us, what our inclinations are, and then cultivate them.

It's not that everyone should stop caring about anyone but themselves: being a gardener means taking care of the whole garden. There is no other way to forge our character except through our relationships with others. We become like whoever we hang out with, but we are also the ones people spend time with. We can influence the agenda to a varying degree just like others. For our own well-being, we need to ensure symbiosis – a mutually beneficial coexistence, which is harmony, if we speak of human nature. Mutually beneficial coexistence presupposes conditions for peaceful meditation to evaluate more effective strategies for the common good.

The time it takes to figure out how to improve in everything, in general, is longer than the dubious immediate satisfaction of settling scores. Arguing is the easiest way to confirm or deny your suspicions that no one cares about you. Start a fight and see whether everyone around you has always been interested in what you say and how you live. 

In reality, everyone notices everyone's failures and successes, but they may not know how to discuss those with us in a way that leads to common harmony, so they keep their distance. We're used to solving every problem with a loud tone because, in our culture, it is customary not to poke our noses into other people's business but to mind our own. That's why everyone feels lonely and desperate.

Attacks, counterattacks, and revenge are common ways of dealing with inconveniences, but they are not the only acceptable ways of concern for our pain. 

We have to figure out more peaceful approaches for showing that we care about our fellow citizens without fear of being rejected, blaming anyone else around, or promising to punish transgressors because we can't help our neighbors properly. To build harmony, we should avoid fight or flight mode and help them to focus more on their strengths than weaknesses. But then again, how can I know their strengths if they never allow me to get close to them? You failed? Hee-haw! Look at me, minding my business here. 

One loves another hoping to have a good time with them soon, sometime in the future. We will be happy, dear. One day, we will be very happy! Why not get well right now, for goodness sake?!

However, everyone has different ideas about happiness and a good pastime. Let’s admit it: love, at its finest, means different things to each of us. I should be sure my partner adheres to my idea of a happy life before we get together. 

Some people love others for the good times only, which makes me think of dandelions, for some reason😊 They want a companion with whom they can work, fight, and rest in good spirits without aiming too high. We can't achieve serious goals laughing all the way. When our vision of a good life is a face with a large smile, we see everyone serious or thoughtful as a severe threat to our light-heartedness.

With all due respect to dandelion as a source of energizing potassium and the presence of numerous useful properties, I know that it is unpretentious and does not claim universal love, which it fully deserves. 

Since I'm not a frivolous person, I assume, I won't match the dandelions' vibe. Oh, well! Big deal! They enchant us with their bright yellow color only for a couple of months. Their heads turn gray way too quickly while deep down inside they remain the same jolly fellas. Nothing personal: as a matter of fact, they don't force themselves to grow taller and blossom longer than they should or to give us some dandelion berries. Still, blowing away all this funny-fuzzy-pappus-fluff so that even more cute dandelions are born is amusing.

Let me emphasize this: Dandelions have not become popular in our diets despite all their amazing nutritional properties. People don't want to eat them every day for lunch. Some people, including me, like to drink dandelion tea sometimes in the afternoon, but most folk will still prefer strawberries to dandelions. 

Strawberries don't like stagnation, blandness, and scarcity, and try to avoid such conditions. They need our help and heed to rise above mediocrity if we want them to give their best for our garden and for us. What they deliver in the shadow will be doubled if we encourage and praise them publicly. Smart, kind, and inquisitive, they will charge us with enthusiasm and youthful spirit. Achieving any goals in the company of strawberries is a piece of cake.

Gardeners love their outside interests for the sake of mutual improvement. They take care of their garden and the garden takes care of them in return. Physical labor helps keep the body fit, and intellectual activity (gardening requires learning what every plant needs to grow healthy) keeps the mind sharp. Fruits of various kinds provide all the necessary elements so that gardeners can look after the garden as long as possible. And when they can't can anymore, the garden gradually falls into decay😱

Dandelions multiply at the speed of light, strawberry beds descend under gravity, stagnant water makes their leaves brown, and eventually, the plant dies.

That's not practical to always count on a kind gardener to look after us. After we realize that we are not weak-willed vegetable creatures, we should become gardeners of our minds and bodies, or we'll risk falling into decay every time we lack a helpful hand. 

You have nobody to support you? Start loving yourself more to improve and reach new heights to break out of stagnation!

To begin with, I could define what I should consider as my progress (e.g. spiritual growth); secondly, I’d outline my prerogative (e.g. positive outcome), and then, my overall goal (e.g. feeling good).

Love is understanding and giving, but sometimes, I don't have what they need; sometimes, they don't have what I want. Self-love and love for others shouldn't end just because I can't afford a sweet for breakfast. I'll save the dessert, thinking about how many harmful calories I couldn't consume, and move on by focusing on what else I can do for myself to improve my positivity. 

When we feel like we need someone to help us overcome our weaknesses, we should think again. Everyone wants a strong partner and some people, deep down inside, might get disappointed when they find out their loved ones are much weaker than they expected, especially if we ask for help for something we can manage without assistance 💕 We should try to solve every resolvable problem independently unless they see us struggle and offer a helpful hand by their initiative. Thus we know how much they really care about us. In this way, we get a big dose of self-respect that confirms that our self-love works! 

Before falling in love with someone, we must ensure we're strong enough to withstand rejection or so-called betrayal: our favorite person may turn out to be spiritually weak. Or else, out of fear of disappointment, we should admire passively, waiting for them to bless us💕 with attention, which may never happen.

Self-love with the gardener mentality is always a good thing to cultivate. It will protect us from many frustrations in life and we will be able to offer a better quality of love to our partners and children: the love that gives them confidence in us and our shared future!