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Writer's picturePatricia

Residents & Visitors



I have many plants in my home. Numerous varieties occupy every windowsill and sit on several pieces of furniture close enough for daylight to keep them alive. Symbiotically, we exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide so besides being pretty, they are a healthy addition to my décor. For the most part they thrive for years but, to be expected, a few do not. Consequently, I tell people I own only two kinds of plants: residents and visitors.


Residents stay with me for years, familiar, growing, plant friends which I enjoy immensely. Each visitor is lovely upon arrival but eventually begins to wane and wither to my dismay. Try as I may to remedy their impending departure, one day I realize they’re gone.


Thoughts are like plants. They come into my mind and take up residency –or I can entertain them for an appropriate amount of time before escorting them out. Dwelling on thoughts enables them take root, encouraging more considerations to sprout. It’s how we form new ideas, theories, belief systems. Conversely, harboring thoughts better treated as interim can cause anxiety, low grade depression, even panic. Our world is full of these kinds of brain attacks: our ongoing pandemic; the threat of unresolved climate change with melting icecaps, uncontrollable fires, and devastating floods; the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan.


I do not advocate denial or looking the other way, but I encourage not allowing the ills of this world to consume one’s thinking, to crowd out other more constructive, beneficial thoughts. Unless we can literally join an organization full time that combats foreign cruelty, or works to alleviate worldwide viral outbreaks, or reduces global warming, we are left to do what we can, part time, in our immediate neighborhood, county, and state. Meanwhile, we have much else to be about.


As frightening, disturbing issues continue to arise, often repeatedly, I choose to focus as much as possible on positive things while not ignoring what’s going on in the world. I allow my thoughts about the awful negatives we face daily to be more like my visitor plants, letting them wane and wither on their own.

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