metaphor : Bullshit vs Fertilizer.

[labelleizzy]

Can't remember if I've shared this story here.

I have this way I think about the emotional damage we accumulate during our life. A couple of friends have found it useful, perhaps you will as well.

Imagine a young fruit tree, indeed, a sapling.

The wind blows, and shakes it about, and if it survives, its roots grow stronger. If it gets enough water and sunlight, and planted in the right kind of dirt, it will thrive, grow strong, flower, and bear fruit. Correct?

What about manure? Indeed, what ABOUT bullshit?

Well, a little bullshit helps the tree to grow. But a lot? Too much? The tree burns. The tree suffocates.

On our personal tree farms, if a healthy balance is, we tolerate only a little bullshit.

The problem is sometimes before we are old enough or experienced enough to know better, someone else comes and shits all over us.

Sometimes it's overwhelming, and the tree won't grow right, due to all the shit that's heaped up.
Thing is, after just a little thinking, you come to realize that them what did the shitting are never coming back to clean it up.

You dig?

Well.
Actually, digging is the point.

We all get overwhelmed. We all get to feeling like we're being buried in crap someone else dumped on us.
Thing is?

Get your shovel, and start digging. Some of that shit may be top notch fertilizer. Some of it's surely garbage. But you got to get out of the pile, and you got to be the one who starts digging. If your arms aren't free, holler for help, and make sure to keep the shovel someone brings you.

Cos you've got to dig. Nobody's job but yours to move that crap. It's not fair to ask the world to do it for you. Maybe /with/ you, maybe you both work together on both y'all's piles... but you've got to move the bullshit that smothers you.

And once you're mostly out?
THEN you've got to learn where the crap has been coming from? And then you've got to learn how to stop the ongoing deliveries, if you have not done so already.

...here's a shovel.
*hefts her own shovel*

Your pile or mine, sweetheart?

Comments

[ivorywitch.livejournal.com]

Oh man...what a timely piece of gold that is! Thanks!

[ivorywitch.livejournal.com]

May I paraphrase this? I will give credit for the original...but man it set off an explosion in my head.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

please do. I was planning to make it public if anyone found it useful.

=)

Look forward to seeing where you go with it!

[astroaztec.livejournal.com]

I think of it like a processor running multiple virtualized hosts. It is normal for the virtual machines in our heads to be running copies of the various personalities who have influenced and formed us, and that includes memories of the occasions when they dumped on us. It is not normal for those virtual instances to circumvent the hypervisor protections and get physical I/O access. That is to say, not normal for the dumping they did on us to overwhelm us or control us. But as with virtualized instances of operating systems, it is an ongoing effort to patch the avenues for access control so that we can say "Yes, I see what you did, but I am more than what you would have me be."

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

I love that last sentence: I am more than what you would have me be.

[celticmoni.livejournal.com]

Life is windy.

And stinky.

:)

And, yea: Much in the way of serious truth to what you say here.

Thanks for this...

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying so.
And, you are very welcome.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(grimaces) oh, yes... good metaphor. As well as astroaztec's twist on it.

[flamingnerd.livejournal.com]

:)