The Garden of Our Relationships

Lest yesterday's post made it sound as if I have it completely right all the time about being careful with my words, I don't. I've been a lot better in 2018, but let's not look at 2017, please? It was not at all my best year.

This is just to say that we are ALL a work in progress when it comes to being kind and developing our inner spiritual qualities, especially when it comes to tending the garden of our relationships.

Relationships are very similar to tending plants. About a year ago, I made myself a cute little fairy garden. The expert told me a certain way to water my plants. She was, afterall, the gardening center expert. However, her instructions to me did not seem right.

So I did it a different way, a way that just seemed intuitively right to me, and sure enough, my garden flourished! Then I began second guessing myself. I started turning the light off at night, and I changed over to the way the expert told me I should water my plants. Not long afterwards, my plants had all died, leaving a very pitiful little fairy garden that wasn't a garden at all.

So a few weeks ago, I finally found replacement plants. I carefully removed what was left of the dead plants and placed in the new ones. Of course it looked great! And then came the time for the regular maintenance part. Once again, I decided to defer to the advice of the expert. Within 3 days, my plants had all withered and were on the verge of completely dying.

Having nothing to lose, I reverted to watering my plants the way I had when they flourished, which is 180degrees from what the experts have all told me. And worse yet, I left for 6 days away wherein I could not tend my little garden at all. I had no idea what I might come back to, but I knew it wouldn't be worse than all the plants completely dead, which is almost what they were when I left.

To my surprise and delight, I came back to plants that had completely healed and were now healthfully growing and looking incredible!

Our relationships are like plants. They require us to pay attention to them, water, feed, love, and talk to them kindly, and pull out any weeds which might be choking the plants. Over watering can kill a plant just as much as under watering can, and each plant is different in what it needs. The same goes for light–– too much and it dries out; too little and it gets leggy with no roots and few leaves.

Rabbi Nicole Guzik notes that, like gardening, paying attention in a relationship can be a very tricky thing. In our closest of connections, it takes time to learn how much someone else needs to speak, when we should close our mouths and open our ears to listen, and the right moments to offer our hearts. It takes finesse, sensitivity, empathy, and grace.

But more than anything else, especially during the challenging times, our relationships need love and kindness. When it comes to our words, more often than not, less is more. Keeping our opinions of what someone else "should" do or "must" do is best kept to ourselves. Offering simple love and kindness to someone in a buckets-of-lemons day is far more nourishing to them and to the relationship than to speak words of advice, especially if not asked for.

I am reminded of Job. Job's friends were so quick to point out to him where he might have erred, what he might have done to bring down so many buckets of lemons. While they had not abandoned Job, they also weren't really there for him either. They did not offer a kindness, a listening heart. Instead, they tried to fix Job's problem, tried to troubleshoot an issue that they did not have in its full context. Their words of advice and solution were not words of kindness; they were fingers pointing at Job, in an attempt to get Job to see where he had gone wrong. And at the end of the day in the Job story, Job had done nothing wrong at all. The advice of his friends was not kind. Job did not need advice; he needed the simple presence of a friend.

So often we do that in our relationships. Our heads are quick to judge and jump to conclusions without knowing the full context, quick to want to give our opinions, quick to tell someone what they must do to change the situation. And in those moments, that is not what tends the garden of that relationship.

Just as I had to learn how to tend the plants in my fairy garden far differently than what the gardening expert told me I "should" do, when it comes to my relationships, I have had to learn to keep my opinions to myself more, and how to speak kindly rather than in "you must"s and "you should"s.

Jesus is quoted as having said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yet, this seems a bit askew, because I know many people who think that they relate to others in their good intentions of "you must" and "you should" is following this "do unto others" commandment. I do not agree. Let me explain...

One of the brightest Jewish sages, Rabbi Hillel, put this axiom slightly different: "Do NOT do to others what you would not have done to you." And that, I believe, is the more correct way to live this aphorism and to build people up.

The problem with the "do unto others" statement, I think, is that we often treat others they way we think they need to be treated "for their own good," and convince ourselves that this is a good intention, and therefore right. WHAT IF we let go of all that, and instead, began not treating others the way we ourselves do not wish to be treated by others?

I think this tiny little tweak makes all the difference in the world. When I'm having a life-handed-me-lemons day, what I want most is simply to be heard, to know someone is there imagining what I might feel like, and asking me if there is anything they can do to help. What I don't want is "you must" or "you should."

So, as a friend, I try very hard not to offer those "you must", "you should", or "you ought to" words any longer. Instead, I try to ask how I can help or what I can do. In 2017 I did my fair share of "you ought to"s. In 2018, Rabbi Hillel's words reminded me that those words are not a kindness; they are diminishing. They will not tend the garden; they will starve the garden, and those words alone––"you must", "you should", or "you ought to"–– can quickly ruin a relationship and destroy trust.

Let us think of our friends and families like tender plants in a garden, needing kindness and to be treated with great care. It is not our job to point out their errors or how they need to change or do something different. Afterall, we do not always know the full story. Given love and understanding, kindness and a listening heart, our friends will find their way through the rough spots, and we will have had the opportunity to ASK, "What can I do? How can I help?" rather than rush in pointing out where we think they went wrong or what we think they need to do.

Let's not be like Job's friends. Let's be careful with the people in our gardens. Above all, let's be kind, saying less and loving more. Let's get to know the amount of water, light, and shade our relationships need. It may take some time, but just imagine the gardens we might grow!