I’ve been enjoying the several analogies, metaphors, similes, that have formed recently around a potted plant in my window. I didn’t think to take a photo of the way it was earlier, which could have been the “before” photo of a before-and-after view. What’s included here is the “after” photo. Or rather, the “present” photo.

Some time ago, the plant was mostly drooping and brown. Edges of leaves were curled inward. There wasn’t joy anywhere in that plant. It had been in the same pot and in the same soil for,,, well,,, I don’t really know how long. So…. Gently, I loosened the old soil, and removed the plant and the soil from the pot. The pot was cleared and rinsed. The plant’s roots were cleared of most of the old soil.

New soil was then put into the pot, along with the plant’s roots, with care for all that should be considered for such an event to be successful for all involved. And gradually, with some time, the plant has become full of life again, could even be said to be thriving.

So,,,, the analogies, metaphors, similes….
I’ve often thought that we could see a plant in a pot of dirt as something like our own selves, with the soil that’s in the pot being likened to our past, and ourselves being likened to us growing out of our past, growing up and out of all of what has gone before this moment.
The past is our nutrients. Spiritual nutrients. Emotional development and healing. Being cleared of the gunk that’s in that dirt by developing good emotional relationships with the gunk. That’s emotional development. Spiritually creating ourselves into our real and genuine selves through developing clear and good relationships with the dirt and the gunk and the nutrients that are our past. Forgiving all of the gunk and our own emotional reactions to it. Being okay with seeing it all as being a witness of it having happened. Even feeling strengthened by seeing it all, ALL, in that way – as witnessing it. Glad it happened to me, because I’m who I am now because I was made strong from all of that stuff. Strong and free and clear. From and through and by all of those processes. Like the plant growing from the nutrients in the soil.

So a little bit different there, because the plant got to change to all new soil. Didn’t have to have the same past still there around its roots. Didn’t have to try to forgive that past soil, just got to change it. Clear it out. Okay. So we still have our past there, with our roots still in it. But we’ve cleared our emotional connections and attachments and habits and beliefs from all of the effects of that past. All of them that we came to understand as being detrimental to us anyway. We found that we don\t have to be emotionally stuck in time. Keep the good stuff, the stuff that has made us feel good and glad and has helped us to like ourselves. And now we just get to thrive with our new attitudes and our new acceptances of the dirt that’s in our pot. Because we have grown from it and its nutrients.

Most effective of all is that we get to stop focusing on that part of us. We can stop focusing down there in the pot and we can focus on our growing self that’s up here above that pot and is growing even wider and higher and developing more colors and broader leaves and reaching and exploring all around us. Up here where we are getting bombarded with light. Maybe we even put out a bloom or two, or a lot of them. Focus up here, and in the joy and expansion of what we are up here, and we get to thank that soil that’s down there that’s been our workshop for becoming this beautiful expansive thriving version of ourselves.

And recently, the analogy, metaphor, simile wave has even gone on to include, for me anyway, the what,,, what shall it be called?,,, the “state of the world” as it is now,,, now in the early part of 2026.

It’s easy to say that the world is in chaos now. That’s the word that I hear and read most often when people or groups want to talk about “the state of the world” as it is now. “Chaos”. There could be a lot of written attempts here on this page, trying to describe all that that word “Chaos” could include and imply. The state of human societies, and the state of the environment. What’s really going on with any of it? We see what the news reports say, but we also wonder how much of that can we believe and how much of it is going to be reported differently in a couple of hours. And again, differently in a couple of days.
And everyone who is reading this now is certainly seeing reels in their minds of how they could respond to what they’re reading here, of how they would express their points of view or even their experiences, all of it being a bit different or a lot different from what I’m writing. Whatever I might write.

What I’m writing here now is that all of that chaos — every conscious or unconscious destructive, cruel, agonizing, suffering, starved, impoverished, diseased, polluted; and sometimes gloriously beautiful and magnificent and compassionate and joyously wondrous and wondrously joyful bit of it — can be seen as being that soil in the pot. All of that stuff that’s been before is now in the pot. Everything that can be seen as “going on”, that’s contributing to the “chaos”, is now in the pot. In each moment, it’s possible to look at what has happened in the last moment as being now in the pot. It’s all stuff that we can see and look at and focus on and think about and focus on and feel things about and talk about and read about and say whatever we want to say about it.
What do we feel about it? That word “feel” back there in that previous sentence…. That’s what matters. Ask the quantum physicists. That’s what matters the most. What do we choose to focus on, and HOW DO WE FEEL ABOUT IT? What nutrients do we give our lives, our experiences of our world, through what we choose to focus on and how we feel about it? Quantum physics says that’s what creates what’s in the next moment. A focus back on the pot creates the next moment still in the pot.

So if we have a few billlion people living on this planet and they’re mostly focusing on the gunk that’s in the pot, focusing on the “chaos”, then that just keeps creating more gunk and chaos. And there really are groups who intentionally design more gunk for us to focus on, if we choose to focus on the gunk. And there are groups who are working at helping us all to see all of that gunk and to get it cleared out of the soil and out of our source of nutrients and out of our focus. Some of it is horrible to see, but how else would we have seen it, except for it being exposed by some extreme event or action. We see all that’s bad and even horrible that’s in the old pot and that it’s time for a very new kind of soil and nutrients.

And there really are groups who are presenting many kinds of happier nutrients for us to focus on, if we choose to focus on what we would like to have that’s different from the gunk.

Focus on what we would like to have that’s different from the gunk. Focus on what gives us feelings,,, here’s that word “feel” again,,, like joy, appreciation, enthusiasm, comaraderie, cooperation. Love. Focus on good food and good health, fairness and fine initiatives, the people and the programs and the companies that really do beneficial stuff for human beings and for animals and for plants and for water and for air and for the Earth, and appreciate them and support them. Focus on them and they will grow. As therapist Jacob Moreno said, “That to which attention is paid grows and flourishes.” And let the gunk in the old pot of the old ways of gunk just fade away. It really will fade away. Have you ever stopped focusing on a plant in a pot in your home,,, stopped watering it, stopped noticing it? Next time you focused on it, it had faded away.