“But what happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another. Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?” – Ross Gay, Inciting Joy
It is distinctly spring here in the garden. You see it in the abundance of greens, in the robin’s song, and in the feeling of contentment found in being outside. Is there possibly a happier time than a garden on the cusp of spring? It’s a time of so much potential and hope for the growing season ahead. Amongst all the good in this time of year, I feel this hint of sadness, wondering how many more springs I will get like this. Living alongside the joy is a kind of mourning for it all. The bees that laze on flowers make me wonder how many more years of their abundance I have. The mating calls of birds have me envisioning the calls I have never heard. I imagine what this chorus must have sounded like fifty years ago, or even a hundred, before extinctions and noise pollution.
For many years, I have struggled with eco-anxiety, worrying about both the ongoing and the future effects of climate change. Every piece of plastic in the ocean or in our soils, every heat wave and fire, and every time monarch numbers dwindled, I felt it intensely. In some ways I am grateful for this feeling, it has led me to my current career, to my community, and my home. It has inspired me to live without single-use plastic and to support local businesses and farms. However, it can be a heavy burden to always take up, and for the past year, I have been focusing on finding more joy and releasing some of this burden.
Finding joy has felt easiest in the garden, where the bounty of flowers and fruits can’t help but leave you nourished. There are frogs’ songs to delight in, and tulips to pick, there is a feeling that no hurt can’t be repaired. So I stayed in the garden or in nature, distracted myself with loving community members, and the hurt stayed away. For a while, at least. It’s now been a full year since I started letting myself feel joy fully, without the associated feeling of guilt that had so often plagued me. Recently, I can’t help but feel that old sense of despair creeping in. The report of continued monarch declines in the United States. The news that every decade climate zones creep further north. The feeling that there is no reversing the damage that has been done. These have all penetrated the thin wall of my happiness, it reminded me that healing is not linear, it’s seasonal.
There is no way to gloss over the feeling that things are not going well for our land. But I can tell you what has made things a little better. Realizing that I am not alone in these feelings, talking with coworkers and friends. Picking up every little piece of plastic I can find in the garden soil and not allowing myself to pass it by or give up the chase. Pausing in my work to watch the Pacific wren zip around, catching insects and landing a breath away from me in his happy pursuit. There are days of hope and joy, to be sure; I just can’t let myself live in blissful numbness from reality again. That is a way to survive, but it’s certainly no way to go about living. I want to live with awareness of the effect I am having on countless other lives and to know when I’m causing harm. This knowledge can be a heavy burden, but it’s one worth carrying, as we can set out to repair some of the damage we are causing.
– With Love from the Garden
Shannon
Farm to Table
Our tasting room menu this month features fresh herbs from the Brooks Garden.