Cutting Away What’s Dead

This plant looked up at me weakly, saggy faced and exhausted. I sat on the bed beside it and inspected it all over. It felt hopeless to try to continue my efforts in keeping this outdoor bush alive: indoors. It was not meant to be in here. I started to trim it, cutting away the parts that it didn’t have the energy to give life to anymore. Some stocks snapped in my hands, they were easily telling me it was time to go. I cut away all the leaves that were so dry they crumbled in my hands and then gently shock the plant to see what else would go willingly. When I thought I was done I sat back and looked at the plant again. This time it was thin and sparse, it wasn’t the plant it was five minutes ago. I thought if I cut off the bad parts off– the good parts would come through and all I would see were the good parts. And that’s when I realized that the good parts… in comparison to the bad parts were okay, but in comparison to what they should be… were no good at all. There was no cutting away the dead and letting the life shine through. It was just in fact time, to say goodbye to the plant in entirety. What a lesson. Sometimes, you need to prune something to the point that it actually no longer exists at all. Sometimes the GOOD is not strong enough to outweigh the bad, and should not be expected to be strong enough to do so. The plant seemed to be telling me… I am tired, enough, stop trying to save me already and just accept I was once a beautiful majestic plant, and now my time is over. And maybe, just maybe, you leave me to die away completely and maybe I will come back later from a fresh start and I will grow out of the dirt again as a new bud all together. But first, I have to die away completely; be forgotten about and then and only then is there the opportunity for me to grow into something entirely new.

This is the way perhaps of the ending of relationship. Before we can move onto a new relationship, whether with someone new or with someone we have already had a relationship with; we must first get closure on and say goodbye to the relationship which is now over. We must move on from that relationship, otherwise we risk bringing those dead and decaying parts with us.