How We Love Our Plants Is Exactly How We Should Love People
To learn how to love, pay attention to what you do in your garden.
When we love our plants we want to see them grow, we water them, place them from where they get necessary sunshine and air, and we do everything that we can to help them survive and thrive. We create suitable environments in which they operate at their natural best. We put them where they get power and become strong, and we want to see their beauty and growth. We want them to be the greatest version of themselves. We don’t expect them to do anything for us in return, we don’t even think of it. We just care about them so much and don’t want to let anything happen to them. We fulfill their needs, provide safety, and make sure they get what they require to live a healthy life. In other words, we commit ourselves to serve them, we do it not because someone tells us to, but because we want to because we love them. And that’s exactly how we should love people, and that’s the meaning of love.
It is a choice to serve another human being not because of any greed or selfish motive, but because our heart admires them and asks us to do everything that we can for them. Love, just like anything comes at a cost, and the price of love is selfishness. To love means thinking of someone as your part, as a part of yourself. When we love a plant, we do our best not to do anything that can hurt it and damage it. When we love a plant, we ask what we can do for it to help it live comfortably and peacefully, not what it can do for us. The same is true for people because love doesn’t ask what I need from the other person but what they need from me and how can I help them be better and do better. I love you means I care about you and am willing to serve you because I believe in you.
Planting is an excellent way to learn how to love because all the things that we do for a plant are exactly all the things that we should do for people. The lesson we can learn from planting is that love is a commitment, a devotion, the decision to be of service to someone.
We love a plant not because it promises us to give something in return, not because we ask the plant to do something for us, we love it just because we honor its presence and appreciate it from the depths of our heart.
The same is true for people…
