Conversation

The best conversations are the ones you could have with lots of people.  Not lots of people all at once- but the conversations, one on one, that you could sit down and repeat with friend after friend. Conversations about things that matter; those are the best.

Not just talking about why life is so hard, but why it's so beautiful.  Sometimes the beautiful conversations start with what's hard.  The garden that grows lovely- whether flowers or food, begins in hard soil.  The tilling of the soil is often where ideas sprout, beauty blossoms, nourishment is born.  There is much work to do.  The preparation of the ground, the placing of the seeds, and the waiting. Oh, the waiting.

During the waiting, and after, there is much else to do.  The watering of what is good, the weeding of what is not.  Determining what is weed and what will be fruit.  Harvest.

There is so much work to do.

Dreading the day of harvest- that long, exhausting day that is all fruit but none to enjoy until the work is complete- that dread will keep the work from ever starting.

So the gardener must begin.

She must just dig at the hard earth- not worrying about the work to come or whether the harvest will ever happen.  She must begin.  Poke the holes, plant the seeds, let the work and the waiting begin.

So this is a conversation.  A story- mine and yours.  I've talked with enough others to know that mine and yours are very similar.  No matter where we've come from or where we'd like to go, our stories intersect.  We may have walked miles along the same roads or only passed under similar skies but our stories have some commonalities.  And that is where we will find each other.  That is where we will find ourselves