On the Other Hand

You have flowers and then you have dirt.

Flowers- the things most loved by house wives. You walk into the every day American home and see flowers on  the window sill, flowers in a vase, flowers on the pillows, flowers on the decorative lamp, flowers carved into the wood shelves, flowers on the fancy plates, flowers on the kitchen table, flowers next to the bathroom sink, flowers next to her side of the bed, flowers painted in her child's bedroom, flowers outside of her window, flowers just before her front door in her tiny garden bed. They are worshiped over throughout the day, fiddled with to get them standing in just the right direction so that the light hits them perfectly. They are moved and moved back to look just perfect in just the right place. Great thought is put into the average woman's flower scheming.

Dirt- the thing most hated by house wives. They toil day and night to get it out of their house. "Leave your boots outside the door!" yells the mother from upstairs, as she is dusting the dirt off of the wood furniture. Taking your outside coat off is a general rule. The dog runs in the door and the woman of the house gasps in horror- you would think she had just seen a monster. To her, she has. There are tiny bacterial monsters all over her just mopped white tile kitchen floor, beautifully cleaned and scrubbed for hours, and now that - beast - of her husband's and the kid's has trod it's disgusting filth all over her tile. How dare it!

It's ironic that the two things vital to each other are thought of as such opposites by the average American woman. Without the roots of flowers, the dirt would wash away constantly and there would be no top soil left. Without dirt, flowers would not be able to live for longer than a few days- which is about all they live in a vase of water. Dirt carries the nutrients that the flowers need to live, and when they die the flowers return the nutrients to the soil. They depend upon each other. It is a cycle of opposites being equal.

In one hand, you have a pile of dirt. In the other hand, you have a small pick of daisies and wildflowers. Most people would pick up the flowers- the woman for herself and the husband in some form of forgiveness to the woman because he spilled beer on his wife's wood floor and it has now stained there. Most people do not stop to think that your flowers will die shortly without the dirt that you hold in the other. No one said that you had to pick one or the other- so why not pick both the dirt and the flowers? Your flowers will last so much longer and you will be able to enjoy them for months, instead of just days. Yet still... we pick up the flowers.

Often times in life we see situations like this- the dirt usually being the past and the flowers usually being the future. Why would we not associate the present with the flowers? The human race, although not willing to admit, is generally very pessimistic when in the safety of their own brains. Your past or present may not be so grand as you wish it to be, but this does not mean that you should shame it with the pointing of your finger and the nagging mother voice inside of us all going, "That is dirt and dirt shall NOT be here in MY presence." Why do we assume that we are too good for the dirt? Humans constantly glorify themselves, and as they do so unknowingly diminish their greatness. The dirt, although usually not thought of as attractive as the flower, is so much more practical. Without the dirt, we would not be here and we would not be going anywhere either. The dirt is the best thing that has ever happened to us, and the flower can only come with the dirt. The average housewife does not notice all of the beautiful flowers that she has set all over her house because she is too busy worrying about how to keep the dirt out. It is the same with the average human's brain- our brain tries to expel and denounce whatever it thinks is unworthy and glorify whatever it thinks is worthy. While becoming so busy expelling and denouncing it puts the worthy thing on the "back burner" because it is so focused on the unworthy. This makes the unworthy ultimately the more important and greater.

On the contrary, there are those who tell us to only focus on the worthy. Look towards the future, dream about the future, care about the future. If you only put the future in the limelight, how will you ever get there? You will spend all of your life dreaming and dreaming and you will never realize how the dirt of your yesterdays has helped you get to your today... So many people never realize that TODAY is their garden. Today is where you may plant new flowers, bring in more dirt. Either way your garden will look more beautiful, just in different ways. Without any dirt of the world there would be no flowers and no humans... and furthermore, no horses. You may think things in your life are "good" or "bad" but those two words are too shallow to describe it. They all create your todays, make your yesterdays, and eventually feed your tomorrows. How will you ever have specific flowers if you do not have a garden? How will you ever have a garden if you had no dirt in the first place? Of course your past will contain both flowers and dirt and your future will contain more to come, but today is your garden and it is your choice what you make of it and how well it is taken care of.

I hope this made sense to someone.