Expectations and equanimity

Beautiful Kauai, Hawaii. If you go this summer, be prepared to spend a few hundred dollars a day on your rental car to get around. (Image by Chad-V)

The neighbor’s cat has decided that my raised garden bed looks exactly like a giant litter box and should be used for the same purpose.

So every morning—literally, every morning—I go out with a shovel and whisk the turds out from among the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. While I’m there, I’m likely to notice that a squirrel has eaten the blossoms of my zucchini vines and someone has chewed the leaves and flowers off of my pepper plants.

At least those plants made it to adolescence. I’ve had to replant zucchini, watermelon, and sunflowers multiple times because apparently, the seeds were just too tasty to resist. Meanwhile, there hasn’t been any rain, the basil and bok choy are sunburned, and the spinach bolted when it got too hot, too soon.

This garden has been a lot of work and expense. However, despite the disappointments and frustrations of this endeavor, I’m striving for equanimity. I frequently remind myself that everything that’s happening is part of the experience. Let’s just say that there’s nothing I’ve searched for that Google hasn’t been able to autocomplete for me, including “how to stop neighborhood cats pooping in raised garden bed.” I’m not alone. This is what having a home vegetable garden is, like it or not.

It bugs me a little bit that there’s a gap in the tidy rows of pea plants because someone messed with the seeds. I’m annoyed that I planted the Bibb lettuce too late and it failed to grow. It’s a bummer that the pepper plants are a bit yellowed, and it’s even worse that I don’t know whether the reason is too much water or too little. Still, I don’t regret this undertaking or the bug bites and dirty fingernails that go along with it. This is what I signed up for.

Speaking of growing things, it’s always a little heartbreaking to see parents who were not prepared for what puberty would do to their sweet child. When people start a family, they probably have in mind a baby, not a surly adolescent. But of course, this miserable in-between age is part of the journey of parenthood, and anyone who wants to make it through has got to adjust their expectations and adapt their approach.

Likewise, entrepreneurship has been glamorized beyond all recognition, but there is still a lot of drudgery and inconvenience that goes along with it, from waiting in line in the zoning office to dealing with supply chain issues to resolving conflicts between employees to serving those pesky customers. The thing for a leader to realize is that the challenges that arise are not obstacles to doing the job. Facing these challenges is the job.

I may not have thought all the way through the commitment when I began planning my garden, but I’m in it now. And even though I might get impatient and discouraged at times, I am a lot happier when I remind myself that everything that’s happening is normal, and I will learn and get better. I can accept reality as it is instead of getting mad at the squirrel that I caught nibbling on my strawberry blossoms while I was writing this. I did bang on the window to scare it off, but I didn’t get upset. When I let go of how I think it should be and work with what I’ve got, I can find peace.

I managed to harvest a bit of lettuce and herbs from my garden for yesterday’s lunch, plus a single perfect strawberry. I’m hoping for more as the seasons go on, but I’ll keep my expectations in check. It’s the easiest way forward.