Our Mind is a Garden

Our mind is a garden,

Our thoughts are the seed,

You can grow flowers,

Or you can grow weeds.

-Ritu Ghatourey

I’ve always loved this poem, but it wasn’t until the pandemic disrupted all of our lives that this poem took on a much greater significance in my life. This poem is about self-compassion and awareness, it’s about paying attention to and honoring not just the flowers of our minds, but our weeds as well.

It’s easy to judge, to point at flowers and call them good, and to point at weeds and call them bad. But what if, instead of judging, we approach our minds with curiosity. How have we grown the flowers we’ve grown, and how have we grown these weeds? If we pay attention, we may see that these weeds have valuable information.

My father had his own garden. He was a survivor of polio, and he immigrated to America with hopes of cultivating his “American Dream.” He believed that our value comes from our productivity, and even though he struggled with disability he strove to be valuable to people. 

But he was unhappy. I remember watching him grow old and tired. I remember watching him work so hard he forgot to tend to his garden. The weeds took over. 

And then I grew up. Without knowing it, my father’s overcommitment to work was a totalizing identity that I had adopted for myself. “The Go Go Go,” I called it. The Go Go Go became tied to my self-worth, and I worked and I worked and was never satisfied. All I wanted to be was to be seen as valuable to people. I was never enough for myself.

It wasn’t until I decided to leave my career and pursue a new path as a therapist that I was able to slow down and see the weeds that had grown. Where did these weeds come from? How did I cultivate them?

The more questions I asked, the more valuable the weeds became to me. It communicated to me. It informed me. It told me to pay closer attention to my internal world, to slow down. It reminded me to care for myself, to tend to my own needs, to learn self-compassion. 

I surround myself with plants because they gently remind me that I need nurturing too, that I need sunlight and water and love, just like everyone and everything else. And so when I tend to my garden, I am present with myself and the intentions I plant into the soil in hopes to see what can grow from here. 

And so I ask you: How is your garden? What seeds of intentions are you planting? What might your weeds communicate to you?