"There is great responsibility in freedom." --L.E.
Wandering around these Obecian streets, brunette, curly locks blowing wildly in Pacific breezes as flip-flop clad feet pad the narrow distance between a sandy shoreline and the cement pier, between a quiet dawn and a vibrant, late-summer day, the wise words of Voltaire greet my always-seeing, brown eyes. "Cultivate your garden," the enlightened philosopher's words chirp out. Like a bird in the far-off distance, Francois' lilting, French tongue is still audible after all these years. "Cultiver son jardin," his voice echoes. "Cultiver son jardin."
For too long now, I have mistakenly thought that this garden was a physical, geographical location, with mathematical statistics as well as X and Y coordinates that I could plot out on a linear map. Enthusiastically, I spent precious time and energy sowing a plot of land behind the duplex that my ex-boyfriend and I once shared in Clairemont. With ax and shovel, I churned the semi-nutritious soil in the shadows of a crumbling façade as the everyday of a relationship that was simply not meant to be marched on. The fruits of my labor yielded wild, yellow Bermuda Buttercups in great abundance. After a wet spring, however, these vulnerable beauties quickly faded and died in the dry heat of a southern summer.
After four, turbulent years of refusing to listen to my intuition - to my bodymindspirit - I moved out. I left a relationship that did not fuel my soul or meet my ultimate desire for deep intimacy. I finally chose to work toward feeding my own highest good. Yet again, I looked in directions outside of myself. I eagerly jumped onto the local, sustainable food movement's bandwagon thinking that the illusive Garden of Eden that I was seeking was to be found locally, either at La Milpa Organica, at JR Organics or at Suzie's. With each brilliant success seemingly came a tumultuous, and reactive, step backward. Fields of Heirloom tomatoes sat ripe and ready on the vine while a mandated quarantine restricted their movement from farm to market. A popular tide of buying locally grown food was rising, meanwhile a dangerous bill was being written. Passionate leaders were taking to the movement in droves but were being driven off by a lack of energetic sustainability.
Thus, the turbulence of change has been rocking the ground underneath all of our feet, for months now. It isn't just the earthquakes and the free-flowing oil into the Gulf. It isn't just the hurricanes and the melting Arctic ice shelves. It's the folds of fabric - of friendship and interpersonal relating - that have also been violently flapping in the wind over the course of the entire past year.
This time, these moments now, are palpable.
The shift is here.
Can you feel it?
Do you sense it?
Recently, an old acquaintance was honestly inquiring as to what all the brouhaha surrounding the year 2012 was about. Mayan predictions and dooms-day headlines aside, what we are currently experiencing is, quite simply, the next evolutionary step of our species. Our paradigm is shifting. In the recent past, our evolutions have included the development and use of stone tools, the accrual of spoken language, the invention of art and city centers, and the birth of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. In the last century, the technological revolution brought with it the computer and, yet another, change in how we communicate and function in this world. Obviously, what it means to be human has been in a constant state of flux for millennium. Actually, change has been the only constant we have known since the beginning of time - as we tell it.
What, then, does this next change have in store?
And, what does cultivating your garden have to do with it?
