S2 | E3 Seasons: How to start recovering from your cynicism.
Hey friend,
I want to remind you of something that makes everything happen in your inner garden.
Seasons.
Sure, maybe you’ve accepted your climate zone, but that’s just the beginning. That’s the starting line, the possibilities are abundant in what you’re able to grow, if you work with the seasons. Climate zones are pretty static, but the seasons are what brings change into your inner garden. It’s what makes growth dynamic. Things will come and go. Opportunities for life and death.
Winters do not last forever, and neither do summers. But for some reason, there are places, corners in our minds, hearts, and spirits where we’re stuck in a perpetual winter: what I call a state of cynicism. Oh man. I get it. I’m such a cynic.
I think a cynic is someone who got disappointed by something, and decided to stay disappointed.
And I completely understand, and I want you to know that you’re not the only one. I think about all the disappointments i’ve had, all the hopes and dreams that were dashed. All my wonderful expectations, just annihilated. Real life just doesn’t care.
But this is the picture I have in my mind:
A disappointment is as if winter came, and killed everything off. But instead of being resilient, and bouncing back with a new season, being cynical keeps you frozen, in this state of winter, you’re afraid of spring, scared of summer, because this winter frost might happen again, you might get disappointed again.
And so, you’d rather just be in this winter season because at least you know what to expect. You know the worst case scenario already… so why hope for anything different? Why hope for a spring and summer to bring something new when you know that winter will just come along and kill everything… so why even try?
Cynicism is a deep suspicion that life will always pull the rug from underneath you. So you keep that part of your garden under a blanket of snow, of ice, protected from any growth that will just get killed off and die anyway. Leave it alone. What are you jaded or cynical about? Starting yet another business after a failure, getting healthy and fit after falling off the wagon, love after a hard breakup, finding your purpose after going around in circles.
You got disappointed, and decided that it was easier to not hope or imagine that something different could happen next time. But nothing will grow in your inner garden if you decide to hold on to your cynicism. If you want to grow new things, if you want those corners of your garden to come alive, then you must
Thaw.
Winters tend to be the most difficult season for gardens.
And goes what? You’re not the only garden that will experience winter, this cold and unforgiving season comes to everyone, you are not alone. There are also droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, storms and fires that have destroyed many gardens. And yet, we must clean up and continue to plant for the next season. It takes resilience to lean into whatever season is at hand.
One of the greatest teachers in this continued resilience is Nature herself.
I remember driving through the mountains of Malibu in California, months after the Woolsey fire in 2018 had devastated everything in its path. The photos I had seen were of blackened hills, houses leveled to the ground, and reduced to clumps of gnarled ash. And yet, as I drove through that day, the place was starting to look different from the photos I had seen. On top of the black hills there was a carpet of green. There was grass and other plants already pushing their way up to the top.
This is nature. No matter how many times she gets burned, she always returns with new life. There are always fires raging in California during fire season. And somehow, nature never gives up on us. Her resilience is remarkable, irrepressible. Generously returning to give what it must to the ecosystem, it does not hold back or withdraw, no matter the risk of getting burned again.
Nature does not withhold itself from us even though there will be another winter. Imagine if the trees said, what’s the point of blooming this spring, if we’re just going to lose our leaves and get frozen again? What’s the point? Why do we have to go through this cycle?
Nature isn’t cynical about the storms, the fires, the winters. But we are. We are afraid to get burned again, so we don’t push out the growth, we are afraid of another storm, so we don’t stand tall with our leaves, we are afraid of another winter, so we skip the seasons and just stay frozen because what’s the point if trying if we’re going to lose yet again?
It takes emotional resilience to not be cynical.
Take a cue from the resilience nature gives us.
Winters are inevitable.
But it is a season.
Spring and summer will come, and you must thaw if you want to see the buds, the growth, the fruits.
You can insist that you are correct in your cynicism, and that’s fine. You will be right in your cynicism most of the time, since one can always find disappointments in this life without looking too hard. But this is the easy way out, the lazy way. It takes no work to have nothing growing. You can have an arid, empty garden with nothing for yourself or others, or you can do the hard work of cultivation, gentle nurturing and have the fruits of Joy and Beauty that you and others will enjoy.
There is always a winter somewhere on the earth, but it does not always have to be your inner garden. Let the seasons come and go. Trust that they will. Revel in the summers, stick it out in the winters.
I know you’ve been disappointed.
We all have.
But you don’t have to stay disappointed.
Don’t let parts of your inner garden stay in this perpetual winter.
Let it thaw.
I will leave you with some of my favorite words from Albert Camus:
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
Love,
Tiara
