Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us those dragons can be beaten.
G. K. Chesterton
Sometimes I joke to my husband Jim before heading off to work with the phrase: “Well, I am off to slay some dragons!” It’s not that I mean those I work with are a problem; they are not. It’s just that sometimes the challenges (dragons, I mean) are a bit, let’s say, difficult.
We are given so many options to live life a certain way. If we pause long enough, we learn that “slaying dragons” is about facing our fears front and center. The garden can tell us as much. If we are afraid of nature, we are not going to get far. Nature is the supreme teacher. Plant a seed, it may take root, or not. We can give a seed the best of conditions and still be disappointed by the result. Similarly, we can find in the effort of planting that seed a profound hope made true by a sprout from the ground and a billowing plant born from that sprout.
Nature will tell us this time and time again that dragons show up to remind us that life is full of tests and our lessons reside in how we meet those tests. Because a seed does not sprout means we should give up. Rather, we plant another seed. It sounds trite, but at some point, a seed takes hold and give us hope for a new possibility. The dragon is conquered in this hope, and we are again reminded that persistence, hope in another form, is the dragon’s most resilient foe.
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