Years ago, after making some homemade soup, I placed the root
bottoms of the three organic leeks into some filtered water, changed it
daily, and watched them begin to slowly regrow. Two days later, they finally had enough growth from the centers, away from the residual
outer layers, those outer layers had begun withering away. (This was my
first time doing this process, regrowing leeks from cut roots.) I tracked the responses of each plant when I peeled various levels of the
wilted parts away from the new growth centers. For one leek, I didn’t
remove any of the wilted outer parts. The second, I removed a few of the
outer wilted “sheaths,” while for the third leek, I removed them all,
except the very last layer up against the new growth centers. Two days
later, The bottom of the leeks had growth spurts of one inch, each! What
was surprising, was the differences in the level of growth from the top! Up
to two inches in variances! How exciting! (Yes, I know I’m a bit of a
gardening/science nerd; and sometimes the littlest discoveries excite me the most! Lol. I digress.) I immediately peeled the remaining wilted parts of the rest of the leeks… as… “My work here was done!”
In experiencing so many changes, revelations, opportunities for new growth throughout Covid chaos or life in general… how many of us have chosen to remain in the wilted, perceived protectedness, and comfort of those cocoons of old habits or cycles? Lots of people kept saying, early on during the lockdowns, “I want things to return to normal.” I think we’ve progressed past the point of knowing; and are acknowledging what was our “normal” is not going to return. But, that doesn’t have to be a bad or negative thing.
Perhaps, like the leeks in my experiment, we could begin to see,
acknowledge, and slowly peel back the layers of our own wilted pieces…
pieces of our thought processes, our experiences, and our feelings.
Perhaps, we could open to tossing aside those pieces no longer serving our lives; because they’re effectively restricting us from the lives we want to
create and live into BEing. If we want to bring a healthy habit into our
lives, we must clear the space for it to enter and remain or “become rooted
within us.” If the thought of tossing out all of the wilted pieces at once
is too overwhelming, the aforementioned leek experiment showed us peeling back a few layers of the wilted pieces at a time can help us at the root level… until we feel our base is strong enough to tear out of the wilted remainder to soar towards the light, warmth, and radiance of the
sun, moon, and reach for the stars in our own time. But, don’t expect the
(leeks) people, places, and things around you to remain in that same growth pattern to end up in the same pot of soup, salad, or even the same kitchen… as you do.