When I started this, I had so many ideas on how I wanted to go about things I was sort of lost in the whirl of ideas and was fighting overwhelm. I had hit buttons and dropped down menus all in an attempt to overcome my overwhelm at all things technical. Then, I hit a button I had hit several time before in the previous weeks, and Bob's your uncle, I accidentally published a partial website. Too many tabs unfinished, not even a blog post, but I had what I was "about", what I wanted to do, a general outline of where I was headed but I wasn't finished yet.
What does that mean to be finished; are we ever really finished? Well, if I want to teach people the joys of homesteading, the value of "weeds" and herbs that have medicinal qualities, and what homeopathy can do for you and what it has done for me and mine, then will I ever really be finished? Does it matter that I removed a couple of tabs until I can get to them and add them back when I have a better idea of what I am doing? I'm a questioner. Lots and lots and lots of questions run through the landscape in my head every minute of everyday. It's how I learn, and THAT accidental publication was a TEACHABLE MOMENT for me. And I thought I was doing this to teach others something. It taught me that I like to think that things are DONE. I like for things to be just so before I allow others a glimpse.
I have been writing things on scraps of paper, napkins, in notebooks, hand written, and I have typed into notes and documents on the computer, even on my phone. Never having published most of it or shared with anyone. I was writing FOR people to read but never sharing (unless you include scathing FB posts). What is the point of writing a book if you never give people a look? What is the point of NOT sharing even the chapter you have finished because the whole book isn't finished yet? Well there is no point really. If you don't want people to read it, then you would just write in a diary and write your thoughts and feelings only. So, I started looking at the "accidental" publication differently. It wasn't an accident but a nudge. I was being nudged to get out of my own way, forced to START when I have been waffling for...well, longer than I care to admit.
The words that come to mind are wasted time. Time, you can't get back, and regret is a wasted emotion. All you can do is go from here, like forgiveness. Forgiveness is not saying it is okay, what happened, just that you are willing to give it a go form HERE. I'm giving it a go. I'm giving it all I have. Is everything perfectly in order? Well, obviously not. LOL There will be typos. There will be SNAFUs. I plan on a shoppe, I'm not there...yet. Yet is a powerful word. It is full of hope and we all need hope. In a world full of hopeless people, I want to have hope. I want to spread it around like confetti full of glitter. I want to throw it into the air and cover everyone with it and show them my joy and how to derive joy from their own lives, even from the smallest things. Even a well placed "accident" can be a joyful thing.
When I first hit the publish button that actually published my work, that I had hit no fewer than about 7 times, I was mortified. It wasn't enough. It wasn't finished. It wasn't perfect. And then I remembered it never would be. That TEACHABLE MOMENT taught me, and I want to do that for everyone who reads anything I write. I want people to see the benefit and the joys and peace that gardens bring, full of useful "weeds" and medicinal herbs, not to mention food, I want to teach people what homeopathy can do for them and, help them realize the powerful medicine that it is. I want to teach people how simple living is joyful, that things and more and more stuff doesn't create happiness but dependence on more and more to be happy. Don't get me wrong I like things too. I work at "things" not being the source of my joy or being dependent on them, unless you count plants then all bets are off.
While reading about homeopathy, Robin Murphy ND (a brilliant homeopath and, may he rest in peace) talks about how colonization creating issues for us here on Earth. I highlighted the passage, like a good student, months ago. As I was going back over it I realized how much it applies to everything I want to do here. He wrote:
"Humans are in a colonizing stage of life here on Earth. They may be perceived as being polluting and wasteful in their behavior, creating more disorder in the world and calling it progress. What a delusion to praise destruction and decay. Our polluted and poisoned world is the result of wrong thinking only. From the biological point of view human civilization has a parasitic relationship with the planet Earth. Our belief systems and faulty education have contributed much to the decline of the human family."
Broken down this simply means that in our desire to control (wrong thinking) we have become dependent on more and more only to have less and less not only harming our environment but also ourselves and those around us. That is the decline of the human family, not to mention individual families. We see "weeds" like the dandelion as something to be sprayed and eradicated so that pristine green lawns have become the desire. We have begun to think that the perfect shiny red apple is the desire, when the irregular one straight from a tree untouched by chemicals taste better and has more nutrition. We have come to think that MORE medicine is MORE healing, though it has become the infirmity. We are less healthy because of the laundry lists of side effects that come from the over-medication of most of the world. We have simply become more interested in the window dressing than what is really there. We think that the optics ARE something when they simply are a snapshot of thing and a photoshopped one at that. Our wrong thinking has created a life full of in-authenticity, while AUTHENTICITY should be the goal. We want for everything to appear perfect whether it is or not, and in my case with this blog and my website, I wanted it to BE perfect before I ever even started. So here we are, years after I started to consider doing this, just getting started and doing so on "accident." Or was it? Maybe my inner, authentic me decided, "You know what? I'm throwing you in the deep end, and sink or swim, it has to be better than floundering" (how's that for metaphor). Either way, I'm glad it happened.
Just getting started is a huge step. We never think of it as such. We always think we can make things better, deliver more, BE better and most of the time all of that chatter leads us into inaction, putting things off until the time is better. Well, my friends, the time IS now. Now is all we definitely have. The past is in your rear-view, the future seems glitchy and precarious at best. Whatever it is, do it now. Do it to the best of your ability. Just do it. Find your joy now. Don't wait for the time to be better. There is no better time. Because the past is gone, and tomorrow is not promised, and one day you will wake up and realize that had you started then? You would be 10-20 years in rather than taking your first steps. Then you will realize that the one TEACHABLE MOMENT led to another one. It doesn't matter that you didn't do it then. It matters that "I" am doing it right now, and the timing IS perfect.
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