Leave it be

I love the reminders that nature so beautifully bestows upon us if only we’ll open our eyes and hearts to notice them.

Nature does not rush; it has its own rhythms, timings, endings, beginnings and transitions between. These are all supported or hindered by the conditions of their environment.

One of the differences between this and our human cycles is that we don’t always trust our seasons, timings or the impact of our environment. We are notoriously bad at trying to make things like horrible feelings go away without feeling them so that they can move through the system. This results in them boomeranging back to bite us on the arse until we find the courage/support to face and feel them. We don’t need to get stuck there or to wallow but we may well need to wade through them – no one gets to bypass this reality.

We may also try to fast forward to some other feeling state/achievement/whatever we really want to experience, by forcing, rushing, praying and willing ourselves to be somewhere other than where we are. All of which is futile with the exception of the praying bit which is calming and soothing despite the fact God is clearly not English as he has no issue saying no, or not yet!

When I look back to nature, I have never heard a tree in Autumn, wailing, ‘don’t leave me.’ I don’t think trees are afraid that after a season of rest, they will not be able to produce new leaves.

Equally, I’ve never heard a tree in Winter panicking, ‘I can’t see or feel anything, will I ever have new leaves again?’.

And then in Spring, I don’t hear the tree’s groaning, ‘if you’ll just try harder, you’ll be able to make the leaves appear quicker’.

During the full blooming beauty of summer, I’ve also never heard a tree fretting, ‘this too shall pass’!

Maybe I am wrong as I am no tree expert, but this is how the trees talk to me!  And I love the wisdom they wish to impart. And the serenity with which they display it.

I have always loved nature since it was my safe place when I was a child. I still love nature which I feel connected to even in Winter, thanks to my conservatory. I read somewhere earlier this year that conservatories are out of fashion – hooray for not giving a toss about fashion!

And so, as a recovering rush-a-holic, I am trying to learn from nature about trusting in timings. This is very different to my default of going faster and faster and doing more and more of all the things I love doing, until the wheels come off and I crash and burn.

Nature whispers to me, ‘slow down Jo, trust in the timings of all things’. Whenever it comes to helpful advice like this, I tend to develop instant amnesia prior to putting it in to practice. So as a visual person, I now have a photo of a snail on my fridge!

Anyway, back to the leaves on the trees or rather the leaves landing all over my garden. A few weeks back, as I peered out of my bedroom window of a morning, I noticed a heap of leaves on the roof of my cabin. They weren’t moving. My instinct is to sort things out immediately, so they don’t build up and overwhelm me. However, on this occasion, I thought, ‘just leave it be, maybe the wind will blow hard enough to save you wrestling the ladder out to climb up and remove them from the roof’.

Remarkably enough, I did leave them be. This is new for me!

A few weeks later, when I looked out the bedroom window, these leaves were gone! And I couldn’t even see them on the lawn. Result! Thank God for the wind!

This reminded me that when I slow down, some jobs resolve themselves. Obviously, many do not, but sometimes, going at a ridiculously fast pace is ridiculously counterproductive. It can cause mistake making or time wasting by chasing things that would sort themselves out if I were less impatient and more trusting.

When I spoke to a friend In Scotland this week, she too had received a visit from the leave removing fairy. And she too was elated about crossing this off her to-do-list without getting up from her reclining sofa!

I think that learning to trust enough to go slowly will be a lifelong lesson for me when it comes to the practical application. Fortunately, nature displays these timeless truths every year in every season. And I’ve never yet heard a tree complaining, ‘I’m bored’. Perhaps because nature is ever changing just like us when we’re willing and there’s nothing boring about that.

Once the trees had finished shedding their leaves, I went to do the final leaf raking session. It was then that I spotted the leaves presumably from my cabin roof gathered in the soil behind my cabin. The leaf fairy hadn’t been quite so generous after all! I could not unsee or unknow they were there, but I could make a conscious choice to leave them be.

This reminded me that a year ago I left a retreat with the realisation that I always tell myself I will rest after I’ve just done one more job which invariably turns into tons more jobs. I decided to change my motto from, ‘I’ll just do x and then I’ll rest’, to, ‘I’ll just leave it be and rest NOW’.

Over a year later, I am finally taking tentative steps towards practising this art of ‘leaving it be’.

I thank God for nature’s ongoing reminders.