Maybe The Answer Really Is Blowing In The Wind?

It would be such a convenient way of getting rid of my problems.

It’s Wednesday. Which means keep the windows closed. Hopefully that will keep most of the noise down.

Wednesday is the day when the landscaping crew shows up at the office complex. A team of hard-working men and women cut, trim, whack, rake, and edge, then comes my favorite part.

The leaf blowers.

They’re not just for blowing leaves.

Any pieces of grass which find their way onto the sidewalks or asphalt don’t stay there very long. The team of leaf blowers, with the machines strapped to their backs, make quick work of those rogue pieces of landscape debris.

Outside my window I have a bird’s eye view of the process. Essentially, the stuff which you don’t want to see is simply blown from where it is to a place out of sight. Nothing is ever picked up and properly dealt with; it’s simply moved from one place to another.

It’s a familiar process in landscaping. And in life, too. How often, when dealing with our own personal challenges and issues, do we simply choose to remove them from our emotional sight lines instead of actually properly dealing with them?

Me? I’ve been guilty of emotional leaf blowing. Of taking the uncomfortable and the inconvenient and simply attempting to push them aside, out of sight and out of mind. Of not properly processing them and hopefully disposing of them, at least temporarily. Because sometimes it’s just easier than doing the work and not taking care of what needs to be taken care of. One is hard work; the other is avoiding the hard work.

I had grown quite good at habitually avoiding my own hard work.

Avoiding the hard work always creates more hard work.

The weekly visit from the landscaping crew has become a weekly prompt for a few moments of personal introspection. A mindfulness bell of sorts. With the sound of the leaf blowers, I ask myself if there is anything I’m not dealing with, is there anything I’m simply blowing from one side of my life to the other.

Creating a space for open, honest dialogue is always important in any relationship.

Especially the one with yourself.

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash