From Sandlot to Million Dollar Garden

I had a talk a while ago with a client of mine that I thought I’d put into writing. Seems appropriate with all the down and out of other singles. This individual like many I’ve come across struggled with codependency. Not a terrible thing, but certainly a thing that needs to be worked on. Regardless, the conversation went like this.

Why do you love others so much more than yourself, and so easily? He listed off a great many things he found attractive of other women. Smart, beautiful, great smile, hardworking, brave, erotic, took great care of themselves, funny and loving. I challenged him, just as I challenge you. Why don’t you have those qualities? He babbled on and never really gave an answer. To which I told him a story of why we found others attractive and their own struggle.

You primarily recognize traits in others you recognize in yourself. Hard to know what something is if you’ve never seen it, right? The traits you see in others are traits you see or desire for yourself, so you work hard to have them or identify them, that’s a strength.

Anyway, I like to refer as loving others as overlooking a beautiful garden. Green grass, sturdy flower boxes and sculptures and tall thick trees full of leaves. A clear pond and tons of flowers and arrangements around it. It’s a beautiful park.

That park is looked at and observed as a great thing, but what many don’t realize is what that park was before. Perhaps an empty sandlot. Full of old tires, dust, rocks and glass bottles. Cigarette butts from passersby’s, garbage bags and old forgotten toys. Oil spills and car parts and dumped signs and scrap metal. It’s not a very nice or welcoming place to be.

However, one day someone bought the lot, removed the trash, cleared the bottles and toys and began to nurture it. Treated the ground where the oil was, brought in dirt and began to treat it with care. Planted grass and moved in trees. They built the pond, planted flowers and put in the boxes and began to water it. Slowly, over time it became great and beautiful. The point is simple. Someone came in and loved the space and took care of it.

Applying that to others is the same concept. “WE” are that passerby to those we find attractive and loveable. But we can love them easily because we see the garden after the sandlot, the potential of what can be. We see ourselves as the sandlot, the most of us. Treat yourself, be selfish in the aspect of self-improvement. Take out your garbage (ex’s, heartache, failures), dig out those oil spills (debt, drama, unsatisfactory living conditions), remove those cigarette butts (poor health or diet, excuses to be active), remove those rocks (trails you’ve yet faced, fears of what’s to come), scrap metal (unfinished goals) Instead, plant the seeds of gratitude and greatness, be the greatest gardener and architect you can imagine. Do those things, defend your space, and let your garden bloom.

Before you know it, that special person may just walk by and see your garden and begin to admire it. Sandlots are a great start, but the work to be a garden is a long and hard road of blood, sweat and tears.

Do it, make your garden!