Image by swetha patel from Pixabay
When talking about seeking happiness, allegories and analogies are often used to describe feeling “butterflies inside.” But we should not try to chase butterflies. Butterflies go to places where they feel safe.
We must cultivate a beautiful garden with flowers, and then the butterflies will come and stay in our garden. If for some reason the butterflies do not appear, we will still have a beautiful cultivated garden.
This concept seems very simple and easy to understand. But do we all understand it? Does simplicity make the process easier to accomplish? It may seem very simple to set up a garden. But it all starts with choosing a location for the garden I am talking about. Not all soils are good for cultivation. We must keep this in mind. Not all soils have the richness and texture that is necessary. Many of them may even have texture and be aerated, but they may not have the nutrients necessary for flowers to grow and bloom.
Once we have chosen the plot, we must remove any stones from it. The roots of the flowers must be able to grow freely, without stones in their way. We must pull out all the weeds before sowing the seeds. The plants and flowers we want to grow must be able to do so without competing with other plants and weeds that steal their nutrients and root space.
Sow the seeds in the ground, cover them, tend to the soil, watering it, but not too much, and allowing the sun to warm the soil. It's all part of the process. The wait. The patience. The trust in the germination process. Something that can be great never appears suddenly. Everything takes time. Let things develop. The process is continuous. It's not like taking a pill and letting it take effect. The process of caring is something that happens. Daily. It is not something that can only be done at the beginning or only at the end. It is a continuous process. Every step counts... Persistence and trust bear fruit.
As the garden grows, it is also important to prune some of the branches of the plants we want to grow. This is important in order to conserve energy and concentrate the plants' strength on their best branches. The process of selecting branches is very important. Not all branches that come from the same root have the same potential and the same capacity to produce flowers and fruit. As such, not everything that comes from the same source has the same capacity.
And then, a garden is not something artificial. On the contrary, it depends a lot on the conditions it has to maintain itself and the care and attention we give it. We must remove dead leaves, remove invasive species, and dig around the plants we want to proliferate.
By tending to our inner garden, the garden that blooms and sprouts from within us, we will show and enhance the best we can be. If we show our best and do not chase after what we want, we will end up attracting everything that is beautiful and lovely around our garden.
And this should be our way of cultivating happiness within ourselves. Not bringing it in from outside, or chasing after it, but rather creating the most favorable and advantageous conditions for happiness to spring forth from within us and spread around us.
Free image from Pixabay.com
Original text written by me in Portuguese and translated with DeepL.com (free version)
