When I Worry I End Up Killing Things…

The other day I repotted three house plants which were suffering and heading slowly, painfully, towards death…

they were doing that because when I first got them I worried that I would kill them by forgetting to water them so I ended up almost killing them by overwatering them…

once I realised what I’d done I didn’t know how to stop death from being the inevitable end…

and perhaps I didn’t know how to stop their death because I didn’t want to stop it…

a part of me felt relieved that the plants were dying as then I wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore…

and also once they were dead they would no longer be around to remind me that I had failed them…

I could safely ensconce myself back in that place of identity I was in before I got them. The one where I didn’t have house plants because I suck at looking after them – I had successfully reinforced that reality. One which was devoid of anxiety about that particular thing due to avoidance of it.

However repotting them has solved the suffering and inevitable death problem (for now anyway). Overnight they went from wilting horror show to bouncy happy light entertainment. It was a miracle of magic…

the magic of no longer worrying, of letting go due to giving up, and trying something out because I no longer gave a shit what happened.

I only repotted them because I had some spare earth left over after creating a herb garden…

and while I was worrying about all of the newly planted herbs dying because I planted them in the wrong part of the garden, they wouldn’t get enough sun, I’d overwater or underwater them, or some other mistake I was sure to make or had already made…

it occurred to me that I was doing with the herbs what I had done with the house plants, and…

they were sure to end up dead if I continued worrying about them in this manner.

As the words…

.

.

floated through my mind, over and over, rising up and sinking in, spinning around slowly to see it from other angles…

my life flashed before me in a series of clips…

of other things, relationships, creative projects, jobs, abilities, hobbies, etc, I’d ended up killing because of worrying about not nurturing them enough, not feeding them, not putting in enough effort, not doing them the right way, and so on…

so I’d overnurture, overfeed, try too hard to do the right thing which wasn’t necessarily what I would do instinctively, and eventually whatever it was ending up dying off painfully, with suffering…

and while I would be mortified, beat myself up about it, overanalyse the aftermath, wish I could get a do-over and do it all again differently (with more material to worry about thanks to hindsight)…

I’d also be perversely relieved because then I didn’t have to worry about it anymore…

it was dead and there was nothing I could do about it so I could finally relax…

and…

then it occurred to me how often things which seemed dead were revived, resurrected, reincarnated, once I stopped worrying about them, once I didn’t give a shit anymore, let go and… let what will be… be.