Life is hard, and everyone knows this. We wake up, go to work, school or University, we do our duties, we help others, fix problems, pay bills, and so on.
Every day, each of us experience a lot of stress, caused by trials that Life puts on our path, and that feeling, that choking feeling is accumulating in our souls, like dark viscous and sticky lava that is taking over all our joy, all our strength. Fortunately, we have friend that help us escape that feeling, we have thousands of sports and hobbies to let off steam, we can sing, run, scream, fight (in a positive way), work, cook, and this is the good news. But what happens when you can’t escape? What if all that dark lava is coming from toxic people that surrounds you, from all the bad thoughts in your head? What if you’re alone with yourself?
We are coming out from a really dark period of time: the world was (and still is) quarantined, every one of us had to spent month of our life grounded between four walls, without friends and sometimes even without their own family. However, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” The Smiths sang, and this is a truth universally acknowledged.
I’ve learned this life lesson three years ago: 2017 gave me a bad break-up, the loss of some of my closest friends, and a lot of other sad stuff, so you could easily imagine that my mental health was not exactly at its best. Then, PLANTS SAVED ME.
I’ve always lived among trees and nature, for my house is placed in the countryside, but as bad things happened, I kept locking and shutting myself up as a defense form from the world, until someone gifted me with a few flowers seeds (Cosmos Bipinnatus and other friends) and something just clicked inside me: to plant those seeds in their tiny terracotta pots, water them, wait them to sprout, gave me a new reason to keep going, a new hope, and a completely unexpected joy, watching them grow thanks to my daily cares.
So the actual “magic” is that taking care of a living being – in our case, a plant – makes us focus on something we want to have the best life it can, by researching and studying that plant’s needs, and at the same time something that let our thoughts flow away from our head, like Dandelions’ seeds in the wind, something which will rewards us for all the love that we give to them with their stunning colours, leaves, flowers, smell and sometimes (if you are lucky) even with their variegation.
It’s like having a baby, but at least plants don’t shout. And of course, you could talk to them, tell them everything you need to take out of your mind, sing to them (even if you are pitchy) and they WILL listen to you all the time, gratefully, keeping on growing and being there for you, despite everything.
