Moments Have Meaning

As I gratefully sit and rest in the aftermath of Mother’s Day, after the longest weekend I can remember to date in our short flower farming journey, I reflect on our progress and my mindset to this point. 

It’s intriguing to contemplate the weight of a moment. In our lives, each minute is the same length, but not the same weight.  We perceive many minutes we experience as insignificant, the ones that if we didn’t have, we wouldn’t miss. These minutes are the ones spent in traffic, or walking the aisles of the grocery store, folding laundry, doing the basic things in life that need doing, but really don’t mean a lot, they don’t contribute to who we are. 

Conversely, there are some minutes of life that we will never forget, that shape us, that change every fiber of our being. The first kiss, the birth of a child, or grandchild, the weddings, the graduations. These moments are on one end of the oscillation of the pendulum, and as is inevitable in life, the pendulum swings to the other extreme in its range of travel, as if seeking to even the scales that we believe must exist.  These moments are the accidents, the tragedies and the heartbreak, the diagnosis. 

Each experience exists within these minutes, and each is the same length of time, but some matter more than others, some have much more weight. 

The minutes that change our lives are very few and far between. 

There are so many more minutes that happen that we let slip by, sometimes without realizing the treasures we’ve lost. 

Farming has allowed me the gift of recognizing these minutes for the gift they are and for how precious each one is. The fleeting moments that fresh flowers give us. Their life is spent growing, often for several months, sometimes for years to give us a few days of beauty, then it passes and is gone. Seeing these moments for what they are draws us into them, and their temporary existence is what makes them so treasured. 

I’ve been reflecting on the time that I’m able to spend time in the fields, tilling, planting, weeding, pulling irrigation, laying cloth and all of the other “unremarkable” tasks that we spend so many undervalued minutes doing. I’ve been working to train myself to be present in the moment, and enjoy the sun baking the back of my neck, the smell of the soil on my hands, the ladybug on my shirt. This perspective follows me outside of the field as well, and I’m able to better recognize these minutes in the present for what they are… presents. 

I’m happier, I feel better in general, and I appreciate so much more in my wonderful life by consciously treasuring each minute that I can. I appreciate my incredible wife, my children and grandson, my friends, and my job a little more each day. 

I’m not saying that everything is wonderful all the time, but so many things are wonderful, all the time. We just need to step back and look at them, and appreciate the splendor that surrounds us. 

I invite you to join me in seeing the wonder that we may have let pass us by in so many minutes, and recognize their weight, then to nudge them to the plus side of the balance, because we decide the moments that matter and where their weight lies on the scale.  - Burt