Growing fungi on the soul

What happens when your garden is neglected and the soil becomes infertile and sour? Weeds, fungi and other unattractive nasties start to flourish. The colourful flowers, the healthy fruits and vegetables get over-whelmed and eventually choked until they die. What happens if your life becomes perpetually unhappy and unsatisfactory? What happens when you are just surviving and not reaching your full potential and you are finding that what you do on a daily basis no longer makes you happy and self-fulfilled? In a metaphorical sense, much the same thing happens to your soul or your body – as in the garden. You cease to flourish, and your soul, your personality or your inner being – call it what you like, becomes sour and you are emotionally cultivating weeds and fungi. It’s not a good look. It may lead to despair, depression and other problems.

I had a coffee recently with a former colleague who after forty years is still practising his profession, although he hates the work. He has convinced himself that working on for a few more years is what he should do because he is still earning a good income. He takes a lot of medication and suffers from a variety of stress-related complaints. To put it simply there is not much joy at all in his life notwithstanding that he seems to have a good marriage, loving grownup kids and grandchildren.

He has reached that stage in his working life where he is really just cultivating fungi on the soul and his work no longer makes much sense. He goes to work often at 7 am and works late. He is not a poor man but he has fallen into the trap of believing he needs much more before he can retire or make any change of direction in his life. Meanwhile, he is living in a semi-permanent state of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

Why is the subject of change on my mind? Well, in common with many older people I have realised I need to downsize and move house. My wife and I have lived here for over forty years. However, the many stairs our arthritic knees have to climb, the large garden and continual work that needs to be done has become too much. If we want to relax and enjoy retirement we need to move, otherwise, we will become slaves to our property.

We have started de-cluttering forty years of accumulated junk, not to mention all the grown-up children’s left behind treasures. Decluttering is a massive task and seems never-ending. We have started looking at other property and living options but nothing seems to quite work for us. At times, particularly when we feel tired, it all seems too hard. It would be so easy to simply give up or defer the work we need to do and the decisions we have to make. However, I realise deep down inside that to give up now would be a bad decision. Such procrastination would let those imaginary weeds and fungi to take over. We would stop running our own lives, going forward, and cease controlling our own destiny. You know you are really old when you can’t embrace change.

Don’t be afraid of change. It is just a different way of doing stuff. Don’t work on mindlessly when all joy of work has gone. There are other options and other choices that can fertilise and replenish the inner man or woman and bring joy back into life. Be decisive – clear out the weeds in your life and let the flowers back in.

By Terry Carson.

This is another of Terry’s posts on GrownUps. If you like Terry’s work, you can read more from him here.