My Grandpa Lindeman was a gardener.  He had a beautiful yard planted with flowers, shrubs, fruit trees and vegetables.  As a child I was out with him one day and spotted a single, beautiful purple pansy growing in the cracks between the sidewalk.  It looked like it was enjoying all the sunshine and it brightened my heart.  I stopped there appreciating it.

He came over to me, looked at it and said, “A flower in the wrong place is a weed.”  He picked it, and I stayed there feeling like he’d ripped it out of my heart.  I felt sad.

As hard as it is for me to admit it, there was a lot of wisdom in what he said and I’m thankful I’ll never forget it.  It seems that there are always changes in life that require us personally to make adjustments to adapt.  Sometimes that forces us to decide what to leave out.  When what must be sacrificed is a beautiful, beloved, or rewarding activity, it can be so, so hard to rip it out.

I’ve learned that location does matter.  If I say yes to anything, I am saying no to all other possibilities at that same moment in time.  It may be a good thing, but I can’t let it take the place of a priceless experience or opportunity.  Sometimes it can be very hard to differentiate between a unique ideal opportunity and a distraction.

It is partly because this is such a hard question to answer that I have loved whittling away at it.  I’ve been trying to find the perfect litmus test, a test that if I asked these certain questions, I’d know for certain if it was best for me to do or not.  I wanted a quick way to decide firmly and well.  I have learned so much I am excited to share on this subject, but for now, let me just share that, yes, a flower in the wrong place is a weed, especially if it is replacing something that wouldn’t just flower, but would also bear fruit.

I teach group fitness.  My first love was pilates.  When I was teaching some of my first pilates classes as a new instructor, I would see that one person had her chin way up out of alignment.  I instructed the class to bring the chin down.  Well, of course, many others brought their chin out of alignment and dropped it too low.  Life, for me is like that chin.  It is a balancing act to try to keep in alignment and avoid extremes that are counter-productive.  You want your feet in the right location, etc.

How can I, a blogger possibly a million miles away, know for you what you need to do to bring yourself into balance and alignment with your own values, your purpose, your teams and your potential?  I’ll tell you right now, if I gave you advice, it would be like telling all the chins to move down.  If you blindly did that, you’d possibly make your life worse.  That is unbearable to me and completely opposite of all I desire.  No, you must decide for yourself what is a flower and what is a weed.  I can’t do it for you.

What I can do is express to you what I’ve learned by experimentation, trial and error, study and thought.  I can describe for you what I think is in alignment.  This is what I eventually learned to do in my class.  “Bring your chin to neutral” is a cue that everyone can use.  But, if you are in a body cast in the hospital, no–it still doesn’t apply to you.  So this is my big disclaimer for the whole of my efforts. Nothing I suggest for you will always be right for you.  Therefore, we all need to answer it individually over and over again and, I think, that is why it is such a compelling question:

Is this a flower or a weed?

Sometimes we harbor and care for something we think is a flower.  When we first moved to Florida we had a big bush that looked beautiful to me and I kept waiting for it to flower.  I watched it grow for over a year giving it time to show it’s true colors.  Well, it did.  It got out of hand and was the biggest thorn bush that did not flower that I’ve ever experienced.  The thorns were thick and almost as long as my finger.  I went to battle with it and won the war, but not without injury.  It took my whole day and when I got finished I saw how big it really was.  It filled our whole astro van that I used to take it to the dump.  I had protected it and all it gave me was a lot of scratches and a day of pain.  I have found character traits in myself that were much the same way, things about myself I protected, feeling they were positive, waiting for them to flower, and then found instead that they had unexpected consequences to my family, like a weed that sends underground runners all over the garden and a thousand little ones pop up everywhere.

To read more of DarEll’s work, click the picture.

In order to excel we have to be able to recognize when we need to make and carry out personal adjustments.  This season is one for me.  I just had to say goodbye to teaching CPR and first aid with the Red Cross.  It has been something I worked hard to be able to do, passionately enjoyed, and wanted to continue.  I am very glad, though, that it became clear to me that at this time, it is a weed.  I discontinued it.  I am very peaceful inside knowing that I just averted a lot of stress and unnecessary pain for my family and myself.

If we want to excel at anything, we can’t be doing everything.  Later, in another location in my life garden, that little pansy will come back into my garden.  I know I can reclaim it and replant it.  It is not dead, just relocated.

In parting, I leave you with one of my favorite primary (our church’s childrens’) songs, “Little Purple Pansy.”

Namaste,

DarEll S. Hoskisson

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