Without realizing it, I’ve been living the lesson of a famous (in the right circles, ok?) Buddhist koan since I was a kid.
I recently wrote about my experiences as an undiagnosed Autistic, in pretty great detail if you wanna dive into that. Click into it below, for certain, but after re-reading about this Buddhist koan, this little story told to help drive home a bigger, more important truth, I realized that all that studying of all that Buddhism had indeed snuck in, and I’m thankful for it.
The story goes, and I am greatly simplifying here, that there were two farmers that were trying their best to grow their fields big and strong and productive. The first farmer spent hours ridding their field of the manure from their animals, carefully cleaning it off and trying their best to get everything perfect before planting. The second farmer left all the manure where it was, all the shit piled up in all the places, dealt with the horrible odors, the unclean work, then spread it around. Once done, they planted their seeds with the foul smelling mixture and walked away.
Fast forward a few months, and the first farmer had to go out and find another farmer with manure to buy, more shit to spread into their soil to make the conditions right for growth. The second farmer, did not.
The first farmer was unskilled, the second farmer was skilled. This is the way of things.
As all great Buddhist lessons, this one clearly applies to so much more than farming, to dealing with livestock and manure, and is aimed right at the human condition, whether or not you’re on the Buddhist path. We can choose to live our lives like the skilled farmer, or we can choose to live our lives like the unskilled. Sure, we’ll stay clean and not have to truly smell the putrescence for awhile, but eventually, we will. Eventually, we all do.
Look, we’ve all got shit.
All of us, a fact I think we’d unanimously agree upon. We’ve got pasts, we’ve got regrets, we’ve got things we’ve done that we’re not proud of, things that were done TO us that we wish undone. We all have mountains of manure that has built up over all these years we’ve been alive, and we all have fields we wish we could turn into productive, healthy, sustaining oases of growth.
So often we work and work and work to throw all that manure away, lest we have to deal with the smells and unclean hands. We want it as far as possible, we pay others to offload it with our words and confessions, we buy self-help books and are constantly seeking new experiences to “grow,” to distract, to try our damndest to erase the pasts we’ve lived through, the fertilizer living in all that filth.
What happens then? We repeat the same mistakes, we live as the unskilled farmer, every year trying so hard to clean our fields of the manure only to have to find a way to enrich our soil later. We feel self-doubt creep in, we feel stagnation when we look around and compare the growth of everyone else’s fields. We have no idea what they’ve done to accomplish this, but we swear there is something wrong with us, something right with them. Then, only then, do we go looking for something to fix our fields, unaware that all we needed was all we already had.
The “skilled” mindset is to embrace the shit, to truly embrace every single thing we’ve gone through, every mistake we’ve made, every decision we probably should have thought through a bit further. Embrace it, hold it tight, and see it as the key to growth we’ve spent all this time looking for.
Wisdom is born in this. Resilience is born in this. Transformation comes from this.
I’ve long spoken on this Signal Fire about the need in our lives for a more minimalistic mindset. I’ve preached on and on in the Kindlings, in the Matchbooks, even in my poetry, for the need to recognize the power of Less. Growth isn’t always about accumulating more, it’s never been. We convince ourselves we need more knowledge, more experiences, more help, more ears to listen to more words from our mouths. Sometimes, minimalism in self-improvement makes all the difference. Sometimes, it’s more about refining what is already there, than adding more to it. Sometimes we already have all the shit we need to grow better, wiser, stronger, happier. Sometimes, the fertilizer is in the filth.
I know it’s scary to believe something so counter-intuitive, that you’re gonna think I’m a liar somewhere deep within you when I say sometimes subtracting is the answer, not always adding. We’re always trying to add these days, always trying to find the quickest fix to the deepest problems.
Do me a favor, and commit yourself to it, even if it’s for 2 minutes here whilst reading it. Try this:
Reflect on a past mistake, reflect on a regret, some painful experience. Make it something that actually feels like the manure we’re talking about, not just some inconvenience that flitters away after long. Reflect on this thing, this thing that you might talk to a therapist about, might try to distract yourself from, medicate away. Write down that thing, whatever it is, and then next to it, make a list of all the different ways it might have just actually contributed to forming you into the self that you are right this very now. How did it shape you? How did it create this beautiful person that we here know and love and appreciate? How did the shit you went through actually give the soil of your soul the nutrients it needed to grow YOU into this stunning human being?
That’s what I’m asking for, and if you feel like sharing it here with us, we’d be honored, and we’d honor your courage with our grace and tenderness. Leave a comment, if you’re feeling so inclined, and let us all share the shit we’ve been trying so hard to clean off our fields, so we can remind each other that we should use it, that we should mix it in, that we’ll end up having to buy it again later if we don’t.
There is always wisdom here, waiting, more from the community we’re fostering than from my silly brain, and I am so thankful for that. I really do wish more of you could enjoy it, and so I’m going to offer another 20% off discount for a bit, so any of you on the fence about supporting this place can give it a try. Click the button below, and join us. It’s time, and I really do need your help keeping it alive.
I Love you, all of you, and all the shit you’ve been dealing with for so long. I love the growth I see in you, I love the fields you sow.
If you enjoy this, please take two seconds to click the Heart to Like it at the bottom, and ReStack it or Share it. This really helps my work get seen by more people and helps this place grow.
We’re given a choice:
we can regret or use it,
all we have endured.
Nothing to do with this particular post, but I just want to say thanks for the song of the day. I’m now loving Petey USA after you shared Goodnight Nurse a few weeks back. I don’t think I would have ever heard of him if you didn’t share it 💛
AHH!! YAY! I love that someone else is enjoying it too!
True story. Last week ended sadly with some angry words. My friend was upset with the apparent result of actions he took, based on my advice he had requested. He went on to bitterly criticize my character. But I did not reply. Yes, it hurt to hear what he said. But I waited. Then he found the results were actually turned out the opposite. He was happy with the results but obviously felt bad about his initial reaction and feared he had damaged our relationship. “No”, I said. “I have been around long enough to understand that your words reflected how hurt you felt, but not that you wished to hurt me. I hope I am much stronger than that. Only I can hurt myself.” If you were to ask me what my most hidden talent was, I would say, ‘getting in my own way or always learning another way to humble myself’. Yes, we all seek and celebrate our victories. But there is a power in setbacks that’s transformative, motivating us to do more, be better, set new goals, even if we start at zero the next day. I will not forget that starting out my adult life, with all that knowledge in my head, I had little or no experience and even less material possessions. Whatever I could fit in my backpack. Most of what I had was potential and a semi healthy body. But I have found the challenges we face are not supposed to mean we are not worthy, or defective, nor destined to failure. They are there to show we are resilient, redemptive, and engineered for learning, improvement, and change. There is not one, but a thousand TikTok movements that have gotten us to where we think we are right now. And then even more to come, as we age and have to learn how to manage the life we have left. Life’s challenges never end. It does take time, opportunity, and sacrifice to learn how to make it through this life. Along the way, one can embrace the world we are in, not just as troubled, or failed, but like a blank canvas; waiting for our touch, our ideas, our creative improvements. My writing may sometimes be pedantic, misdirected, or exhaustive; my questions seem critical, but I am eternally curious and positive about our ability to learn from the past and shape our future. There is always hope and inspiration in our actions to improve.
"Only I can hurt myself."
You, my dear, get a huge, long hug. Wow. Thank you for this, and what a relief!
YES.
Wow Kevin. The wisdom we're so lucky to receive from you will never stop astonishing me. This is an insanely gorgeous testament to a life well lived, and the mentality that you have cultivated. THANK you for this.
Love this!
Thank you!!
I've got piles and piles of shit, I wouldn't even know where to start.
However, I will leave this with you. My husband, self-proclaimed.Athiest, just said as we listened to this on the way to my parents' house for a Sunday lunch something to the effect of this being the Sunday sermon we all need. And it got me thinking. My behind is usually in a church pew Sunday mornings more often than not, but this very much brings me the same feeling as hearing our minister deliver his weekly message; comforting, thought-provoking, and generally exactly what I needed to hear.
I know organized religion is a touchy subject, especially as of late, so I apologize if I offend with this comment.
Oh Karen, don't we all! I firmly believe we'll never know where to start, and that the where doesn't matter at all. Just that we do. This compliment means more to me than you know, and I never would have imagined hearing that anything I write feels like a sermon to someone. How beautiful. Thank you, truly.
I won't share the 'thing' ... the circumstance, but I will share, what to my surprise, the reaction has been and how no one [well, me and my therapist] believes my calm.
What it was shook my world and made me wince. It has infiltrated my relationship, and there are images I have not [will not?] been able to release from my inner being. It's been disruptive.
Until today. I will share my list on how this event has become an awakening and an inspiration to my daily life. How the shit that hit the fan became has become something beautiful.
Let's just say this was [is] something that most people would not recover from or forgive. [My therapist has been befuddled, thinking I should've ended the relationship.] It hurt, and I still have inklings of that hurt.
But it made me remarkably and surprisingly stronger.
I chose to understand and forgive this event. [It's not what you think it might have been.] The understanding of it is vital. The circumstances of how it happened. I choose to see it from a place of love, and in that love, I have [mostly] been able to forgive.
This has led me to how I manage my emotions with the public I work with. How I let things go that are aimed at me, but are not mine to consume. It has made me so much stronger in knowing who I am and where my breaking point is ... or could be.
I chose to accept this event with an open heart and open mind, rather than dismiss it in anger and fear. I faced that fear and have been able to SEE it for what it is. A fear so much bigger than the incident in and of itself.
I am more assertive. Strong. and capable of loving what is, and now ... I believe I can let go of images that do not serve.
Thanks for this, Tyler. I am sighing. All my love to all you love.
I like what you said about becoming stronger by knowing what your breaking point is or could be. You seem to have “come out on the other side” in a positive way from this negative experience.
I am so sorry for the world shaking, for the wincing. I Love hearing that the things you have endured have led to strength, what a beautiful thing. You're like Rumplestiltskin but you make strength out of trauma instead of gold from straw. Stunning.
thank you
Coincidentally, I just finished the book, The Power of Regret. One message in the book is about the redemptive possibilities of regret- if we don’t let them define us and if we learn from them. I have so many regrets, big and small, ones that only matter are in my mind, and I cannot seem to let go of them . I think the exercise of writing them down as you suggest and reflecting on them in a more positive light may be helpful.
I love this, and I am so sorry you're burdened by them. I hope all my hopes relief comes and you no longer feel so heavy by them. WHATEVER it takes to purge them, I'll help you do :)