Failure: the Unsung Hero

When life is easy, we can get stuck in a status quo. Doing the same thing over and over again is ok, but it can also be the beginning of stagnation, and stagnation is the beginning of an end. Don’t get me wrong: I love ease and effortlessness, but I also know the magic that lies in encountering limitations. Just as ocean tides find their power when forced through narrow passages, our creativity can also rise to its full force when it presses up against constraints.

I love to garden. So much so, that I created a garden space that is too big for me to manage alone. I need help! This year, I decided to put out a call to anyone who wanted to share the space, and I marked out a block of land for them to do with as they please. My first 'customer' took one look at my organic set-up and exclaimed, “This is way too much work to get anything to grow.”

Funny comment, since I am eating kale, leeks, beets, parsley and broccoli this spring, and I have far more output than I need with very little effort toward it so far. However, I do have a sort of fancy-free style, whereby I spread seeds as I skip from rock to rock (carefully avoiding compressing the soil, of course). I guess my garden visitor just couldn’t see the food opportunities beyond the “disorganization”.

Regardless of that, the point I am trying to make here is that the size of my garden is a type of constraint that forces me to search for other management ideas. Last year, I hired a gardener to help me with the weeding. For several years before that, I planted cover crops.

Instead of seeing 'the problems' in the apparent obstacles I encounter, I have been finding joy in meeting the challenges. Each limitation (kind of amusing that a big garden is a 'limitation') becomes an invitation to me for exploring innovations. I transform what could be overwhelming into a laboratory for creative solutions.

Gardening is like life. I planted a plum tree five years ago and have only ever harvested three plums. Disease and insects have been my nemeses. I made a mistake when planting the poor tree, I think. I gave it far too small a hole in the ground, surrounded by rock and gravel. So, I think there hasn't been access to enough nutrients for it to thrive. Each year, after trial and error (fertilizers, bug sprays, etc) I have watched with anticipation as the tree blossoms and sets its fruit. Every year, it gets my love and attention as I humbly learn more from my previous year’s blunders. Success or failure - what will it be this year? To me, this persistent dance with disappointment mirrors how we grow in expertise and wisdom in life. It happens not from immediate success, but from the patient accumulation of lessons that only encounters with failure can teach.

The most difficult challenge for me is pruning back the overabundance in my garden. My hollyhocks and crocosmia plants seem to so joyously celebrate living in their largeness that I eventually become unable to make my way along my garden's rock paths. My sunflowers stretch to the sky, but then late summer winds tend to wreak havoc on them. You will often, then, see me dashing around with a ladder, sledgehammer and posts in a last ditch attempt to help them continue in their quest to flourish upward.

I have planted seeds that don’t sprout and I have put out bees when it is too cold. I have mullein and shasta daisy seeds spreading and growing in unwanted locations. Trust me, it is all a wonder and a beautiful thing, and there is more than a little chaos too. I might think I can control the nature of life, but as I try, I learn about letting go and trusting instead.

Gardening asks me to be open and ready to shift my view to looking for opportunities. Isn't that the essence of the resilience that is required in every aspect of our lives? Each adversity we weather is transformed into advantage, if we allow it to be. My years of cover crops and mulch have developed a microorganism rich soil that produces a bounty of nutrient rich foods - albeit, not always the harvest I may have planned for. 😝. (Perhaps my garden is suggesting its own preferred diet for our home? I'm listening).

At the end of the day, I have the opportunity to share food and flowers. Passersby delight in the richness of life that my garden showcases, and I am rewarded by their enthusiastic feedback, and the wondrous array of birds and other creatures that flock together to partake in the feast. I am also amazed at the accumulated knowledge I have obtained through all of my failures and successes. I may take this for granted until a visitor joins me in a journey through my multi-coloured wonderland. My gardening resilience and courage to persevere have been instrumental in enabling the display of innovations I can point to, and the wisdom I can share. I know that now inviting partners and collaborators into my landscape will open up even more unexpected doors, and that will lead to even more new perspectives.

In the end, as I have said, I believe that gardening is like life. I carry its lessons into all my affairs. Through nurturing my garden I have deepened my capacity for openness, courage, experimentation and humbleness. Failure pushes us from a place of stale comfort toward the bold and new - and THAT is where brilliance is born. Like my plum tree that has weathered five growing seasons for just three perfect fruits, our greatest achievements can emerge from our most stubborn failures - not in spite of them, but because of them.