Watch A Plant Grow

Life has a certain rhythm and pace that many of us who live in concrete jungles have lost touch with. The easiest way to literally get back to the roots of life is to watch a plant grow. You don’t have to grow one yourself, especially if you’re like me and don’t have green fingers. More accurately, we could all have green fingers if only we had the time. And that is the crux of this post. We’re in so much of a hurry that we need to slow down.

1. Adopt a plant

Find a small potted plant somewhere along your route to work, or outside a neighbour’s house. When I say adopt I don’t mean take it home and make it yours. Just adopt it in your heart as something important to you for the next few months. You are going to watch this baby everyday and learn a lot from it. You are perfectly welcome to buy a plant and grow it yourself, of course.

2. Look at your plant for a minute everyday

This sounds weird to most busy people, and they may think you look weird if you stop in the middle of a busy pathway just looking at a little plant. So try to find somewhere with more privacy. The point is to look hard enough to remember the shape of the leaves, the number of flowers if any, new shoots, browning or dying leaves. Note any changes from day to day. This is one of the best ways to practise your powers of observation. When you can observe the changes in a plant, you’ll find observing human behaviour a piece of cake since that is much more obvious.

3. Make mental notes

Depending on what type of plant you adopt, you will learn different lessons. People who have observed the bamboo plant note that you could spend years watering it and nothing happens for 5 to 6 years, then suddenly it shoots up 6 feet high. See, some people are like that. They bloom late in life, or take a long time to become proficient at a skill, but once they do, they soar to the top of their class. The lesson here is patience. Growth sometimes occurs in spurts and the timing is not within your control. Just keep working on it and you may amaze yourself someday.

You and I are most likely not going to spend years on this exercise. I like to observe the money plant because this is fast-growing and the changes are easy to see from day to day. The lesson I learnt from this plant is that it takes very little care. I can forget to water this for a week or two and it will continue growing happily. It’s what they call ‘low maintenance’, and sometimes I have to remind myself to be low maintenance too. I’ve had to learn to make no demands on others.

4. Start to compare

Once you’ve learnt something about your plant, look out for people you meet who are like that plant. This sounds a little corny, but it’s actually quite useful. You’ll realise that some people are like the bamboo, others like the money plant, and some like the cactus – all prickly and often unpleasant to be near but who are hardy survivors and good to have around in a crisis. Some people will be like the orchid – beautiful in bloom but requiring lots of fertilizer and sunlight, who can only function well when they get lots of praise and attention. Still others will be like ivy – slow to grow and without flowers so they aren’t very noticeable, but they are strong and provide shade and shelter when needed.

The wonderful thing about this comparison is that you’ll realise that just as there are countless varieties of plants in the world, all with their own growth patterns and peculiarities, so there are many different personalities who all have their quirks and their strengths. This knowledge will help you deal better with other people, and accept them for who they are.

5. Grow yourself

And you thought this was about plants? It’s about you, of course. Watching a plant grow is a way to hone your skill in observation, so that you can apply it first on yourself, then on others. We are so busy that we forget to stop and observe how we grow best. What environment works for you, how often you need positive input into your thinking, how long you take to bloom in any given career, whether you can grow upright on your own or need a support structure.

So let’s get back to nature. And don’t just stop to smell the flowers. Stop long enough to watch how they grow, and you’ll find out things about life and about yourself that you never knew.

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