Farmers from various parts of the world burn fields. This process is called agricultural burning or stubble burning. Agricultural burning prepares the seedbed for planting since it nullifies unwanted crop refuse, weeds, and pests in the field. One can think of it as a farmer’s pre-planting season routine.
Fields are a different topic, but we can think of our lives as one. I may look at the tree of my career as a tall, leafy shade, while someone might have a tree with the same look as mine, but theirs is of a different species: relationships. Each of us may have, over a lengthy time, considered which crop to grow – often at the expense of other possible harvests.
In other words, we choose what we plant, cultivate, and harvest the same way we deliberate on those we uproot, trim, and discard.
Too often, however, we forget that we can specify which stays and which doesn’t. The sickle, chopper, and axe remain in the toolbox, rarely to be utilized because we take in a bulk of everything that comes into our lives as though they will stay, ad eternum, while not realizing some of them are unnecessary stubble and waste.
We forget that we could let go.
And so it helps that we remind ourselves we carry the power to cut off the shackles that bind us. When we examine the toxic chains that fetter us, we can understand that relinquishing them should not be difficult unless, through the farming analogy, they already have deep roots in our lives.
So, more fundamentally, we must understand that we can choose.
We can say no, establish boundaries, and ditch the unimportant stuff for the more important ones. At first, caring for the field that is our lives would feel like work: constant plowing, digging, tilling, trimming, and re-planting under the sun’s searing heat. We may even need to do a full-blown agricultural burning in the context of our lives – that is, to scorch all of what we have planted and wait for some time to decide which herb, shrub, or tree to introduce.
But if the benefits of this grueling work outweigh the pain of having an uncultivated, hardscrabble life, wouldn’t it make sense to sacrifice a bit of time and effort for a better life?