When watering potted plants, we give bigger plants a little more water and the smaller ones a little less. Sometimes we may forget to water them, so we try to compensate by giving them more water later.
But let’s say that we only have limited water for all the plants. And let’s say buying new plants makes us feel good so we’ve got too many of them now.
What do we end up doing? Well we wouldn’t want to see any of them die, so we end up watering the ones which seem like they’re about to dry up. This way we think we can keep all of them alive.
Some of the plants seem more resilient, so we end up watering them less frequently. Funnily enough, these are also our favorite plants with the most colorful and fragrant flowers and lively leaves. We like them, but we also understand that they’re fine while a different plant might die if we don’t water it - so we water that instead. This way, we have a lot of plants, each is growing and we’re happy none are dead yet.
Then let’s say something big pops up and we forget to water our plants for a few days…then when we come back after a week, we find that our favorite plant is dead.
We’re shocked, how could this happen? This was the most beautiful and resilient plant, our favorite - but now its dead… Instead, all the other more fragile plants which we watered last are still alive, but we don’t even like them that much, they were never the ones which made our little collection beautiful but instead are the ones which robbed us of our favorite plant. No amount of over-watering the dead plant is going to bring it back either, and there’s nothing we can do about it…
This ain’t about plants.
(Duh, this is a Pratypedia blog, what were you expecting?)
[Key: Water - our time and effort; Plants - our relationships]
Anyhow, that’s all the baba ji gyan* you’re getting today.
Now that school is over, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my own connections with people. I have over a thousand followers on instagram, I know like a hundred people well enough to call them over to my house, I’ll make a conscious effort to stay in touch with like 10 of them, and there are only 5 with whom I can see myself staying connected with through the rest of life (optimistically). I’ve lost touch with a lot of people over this journey, met at least double that number of new people, and my top 5 has seen quite a few changes beyond positions 1 and 2 in these last two years. I’ve killed more plants in my garden than I can care to keep count of, and I have also witnessed some of the most beautiful flowers bloom when I actually let some connections grow till their full potential. I also frequently find myself double guessing which plants I need to hold on to and which ones aren’t worth it for me.
More importantly, I’ve figured out the volume of my bucket. I have a better grasp of just how many genuine connections I can maintain healthily and I have been building habits of messaging everyone from my top 10 at least once every week even if I have absolutely nothing to talk to them about (it got pretty awkward with some of the guys who were worried something was seriously wrong with me).
Sometimes when we see some promising plants dry up and can’t save them it really hurts, but it can also be equally encouraging as it reminds us that we are capable of finding those flowers and making them bloom, we’ve done it once and we can do it again. That being said, a little water daily is always better than drowning a plant once a month.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! This was perhaps one of the more grassy reads as I didn’t have any green ideas about my usual puns or humor.
Also, the biggest trees are seldom surrounded by flower beds, it’s usually just grass or shrubs. The grass will always outnumber the rest, but lets appreciate them for what they are without wasting too much water there.
[*For non-hindi speakers kripya seekh lo, or there’s always google translate]
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