acorns - the allowance of planting seeds

She fills her hands with them, running over to the basket to toss them in. Over and over. She's inexhaustible. I have to admit, it's fun, there's a beautiful feel to acorns.

Their smoothness in your hand, their size, it just feels so wholesome collecting them on an afternoon as evening hastens in and the air starts to cool rapidly.

How magical is a seed? How magical that of the thousands and millions that one plant produces in its lifetimes thousands and millions of plants could grow. How beautifully fractal. 

How strange and brilliant that something that can fit neatly in your enclosed hand could one day be as big as a mighty oak, older than you will be in this lifetime. How wonderful that oaks mother their ecosystems, they mulch them yearly, heavily. They provide food and shelter for many animals. They let through the sun in winter and give delicious shade in summer. They're great for climbing. They just call you to sit under, with a thermos of tea and some sandwiches.

You cannot force a seed to grow.  You cannot make it grow into a healthy plant with force. The conditions have to be right. You may nurture the seed and plant if you wish, but regardless of what you do, if the conditions aren't right, you'll likely be disappointed.

Seeds are like ideas.
You can spread them, carefully, kindly and if the conditions are right, they will grow. You cannot force them to grow. Perhaps one day someone's paradigms may shift, perhaps they will build a new way of being and doing because of a seed idea you planted... and perhaps not.

How we share and spread ideas matters. I can certainly enhance my plants' likelihood of successful germination if I provide optimum conditions.
However, the context that the seed comes from, as well as the context it is going into matters. It affects the whole kit and kaboodle.
On the face of it the optimal environment for planting seeds and ideas seem very different. One involves dirt and compost and sunlight and water... and the other does not at all.

When you think about it though, both seeds and idea work best when they are delivered into fertile ground. Into spaces that are ready and prepared for growth. Both seeds and ides benefit from being placed kindly into non-stressful spaces.

People do not learn best when they are being told they are stupid, wrong or naive. Loving, kind interactions are the key to how we help new ideas to spread. And it's also got to be okay if someone isn't interested in our ideas. In allowing others to question our ideas, feel comfortable enough to present and alternative perspective, we know that we are succeeding in creating healthy new worlds. Is the kind of world we want to live in where one set of ideas (our ideas or others') are accepted without question?

And ultimately, do we really know either? Aren't we learning too? Isn't this whole journey that I walk an experiment in relearning my humanness and my place in ecosystems? I too am seeking seeds. I too am germinating ideas planted many years ago in conversations that seemed like no big deal.

Holding tight to an idea, needing it to be accepted by others for it to be valid, needing it to be right... that is not planting seeds and allowing.
The beauty of seeds, the beauty of ideas is that they have to be allowed. They can not be forced. People have tried. But what is the merit of an idea if it must be forced onto others for it to be successful?

The letting go of control is implicit in how we germinate seeds and how we spread ideas. For people like me, terrified of the implications of inaction on climate change, this is hard to accept.
The only way forward for me is to accept that I must keep planting seeds. I must keep living in the way that I feel is the best example of the ideas I hold dear. And I must keep examining those ideas regularly, to check that they still speak to me.

How else can we live but to plant seeds?
Seeds we may not see germinate in our lifetimes.
Seeds we may despair for but plant anyway.
Seeds are like hope in the darkness.
Hope for the future.
Hope for future nourishment, even if it isn't yours.
Hope that if you plant something in a loving way, with intention and with release.
Knowing that the seed may never grow, or may grow into something quite different from what you intended.
What does this all mean?
I have no clue.
Plant seeds. That is all I know.
Plant seeds as a way of being.
From an acorn
An oak
Which births an ecosystem of its own.