Chillies
Much of life is immediate. Online shopping can be delivered the same day. Painkillers promise to act instantaneously. My microwave meal is ready in minutes.
Growing chillies challenged this for me. You cannot force a seed to germinate. You cannot make a plant grow faster than it will. For eight months, from when I sowed the seeds, to when I harvested the chillies, they helped me to slow down and push back against the instantaneous pace of life.
The seasons pass. They suggest simple rhythms to me. I’ve had the best crop of chillies ever this summer. A modest few fruits from a handful of plants but a feast in my eyes. Perhaps I paid more attention to the rhythms they required. I am certainly grateful for the rhythms they exerted on me.
Ju
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
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I wonder how we learn to slow down on the inside? Musicians learn to stay in a groove through repetitive movements. Could this be a relevant metaphor for all of us?
Nice lessons from chilies. Letting go of what we can’t do in a sure hope that something beautiful will come out of the process. Should the way we relate to others work in the same way?
Did delayed gratification improve the flavour?
They’re currently hung up drying
As they say, anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly. Maybe that’s another hot lesson chili peppers can teach us, one that we can warm up to as we’re “hung and drying”.
I grew tomatoes this summer for the first time. Plants shot up and then nothing for weeks. When the little tomatoes started coming it was fast and furious…until the cold came. Lessons in accepting the natural rhythms as they come in my life.
Should we learn to slow down and look at the world as it moves around us? Even thinking about the 4 seasons each one has its own little detail that the other 3 don’t.