Lessons from the garden – community
July 30, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under The Art of Happiness
We seem to be living in an increasingly disconnected age, or maybe that should be more electronically connected. Most of us don’t even know our neighbors anymore. Partly that’s because of computers, but long commutes and real-estate prices are just as much to blame. In just the five years I’ve owned my house I’m on the third neighbor in the house next door and for sale signs seem to be an annual crop across the street. One neighbor even asked me if I travelled a lot because she only saw me on the weekends when I was out in the yard – I wasn’t travelling really, but my commute was so long that I left the house and returned in the dark. Even if it’s only on weekends or in pots on an apartment balconyu, gardens can be a wonderful way to be a part of your community.
For one thing, the new neighbors or the long-standing ones that you’ve never met are much more likely to stop and say hi and strike up a conversation if you’re out in the yard then they are to walk up to your front door and knock without a reason. We are far more leary of interupting these days than our grandparents were, I think. Gardens open things up for more casual conversations, offering a variety of safe topics on plants and colors, not to mention compliments. You might be surprised at what you consider to be overgrown with weeds looks stunning to someone down the block. Offer to share some seeds or starts and you’ve got an instant community project that will withstand houses trading hands.
Changing the rules of friendship
July 28, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under The Art of Happiness
Have you ever made a conscientious effort to change a habit or behavior and then feel like you’re being punished because friendships change for the worse or disappear altogether? Smokers trying to quit often suddenly realize that the majority of their friends are smokers even though if you’d asked them before they tried to kick the habit they would probably tell you they had lots of non-smoking friends. It can be the same with any major change – you’ve changed the rules and not everyone thinks its for the better. Almost always this has more to do with how they see themselves than how they see you.
For example, if you had a habit of complaining that you decided to break but your friends were co-enablers then odds are good that if you stop complaining you are breaking an unwritten contract as well as implying by virtue of taking the action that it’s a bad habit that can be corrected – if they don’t take a similar action the friends may see themselves as deficient even if you don’t see them that way. Relationships between friends tend to fall into roles. If one person changes out of that role, be it mentor, conspirator, confidant, student or whatever than there’s a chance the friendship may need to take a hiatus for new roles to be negotiated and it may not come back together. There are lot more examples in Could friendships be ruining your life?
The good news is that the smokers that successfully quit eventually do find whole new circles of non-smoking friends as they change their daily habits to include new things. The same goes for the person that quits a job to go back to school, moves across the country or starts their own business. That period in between the old life and the fully developed new life can seem lonely and scary – heck, it’s scary without friendships changing, but if it happens it’s likely a painfully necessary part of the process. Approaching it with an open heart and a healthy dose of patience will deliver you safely into the arms of the friends that stuck by you and a whole bunch of new ones that you wouldn’t have met otherwise.
