There is a Beccy Cole song called "Little Victories" and it is about the small things that give our lives meaning and make us feel successful. I have experienced some of these tiny little successes over the last few years and they have made a huge difference to my outlook on life.... totally out of proportion to their worth, on the surface of it.
A month or 2 ago I was chatting to a lady before yoga and she mentioned something about wanting to grow vegetables ..... just the catalyst I needed, of course, to issue gentle encouragement and offer a couple of winter suggestions. I don't think I even bombarded her with blog addresses and compost recipes! I thought no more about it.... until I walked into the yoga room this morning and set myself up next to her, by chance. She said "Hi.... I have been meaning to tell you that I have dug up some lawn and now have 3 small beds of winter vegetables growing." The yoga class started and I didn't get a chance to comment.
Little does she know that she made my day, and I will remember it from now on. It has added to the many other little victories in this gardening life that make me keep writing stuff on this blog and wanting to help to influence the route humankind takes into a future that we can choose rather than one chosen for us by others. Others who have made my day and my life recently are those who have joined the seedsavers simply because they found the blog....Ting and Tina and Nat, to name a few. Of course Chook would have to be my number one inspiration. Then there's Barb.... oh the list goes on and on. They thank me, but it is me that is so thankful to them, for giving me those little victories.
When I started with the Wednesday garden group (not the seedsavers group), about 11 years ago, I was the only one who grew vegetables. Now, sure, there have been people come and go, but every single one of them that I can think of started to grow vegetables because I did, while they were part of the group, and they could see it wasn't that hard, each time that gardening was at my place. Now our current group is totally committed more to food gardening than to ornamental and I am really proud of that.
I am not trying to say how great I am... just that life is a funny thing and that we all need these little victories to keep us enthused and active and forever going forwards. It is when people lose touch with hope and have no little successes that life becomes like an abyss. Some parts of my life may be far less than perfect but having a tiny influence over the future of human civilisation is a mighty fine goal for me and people like this lady at yoga today continue to play a part in my feelings of success without even realising it.
Soon I am leaving on the Vegetable Vagabond trip and every one of those people who have offered to have me in their homes and gardens have, one by one, already given me so much just by their kindness. Who would ever have thought that a person who just grows vegetables and writes about it on a blog could, in such a short time, have invitations from people all over the world to go and dig in their soil and cook in their kitchens! Little victories sure can add up!
So, every person who reads this blog.... close to 100 hits and 150 page views per day, every day now.... is hopefully having little victories themselves and influencing our future for the better and it is like a domino effect...on and on... until the world finds itself on a fine, green path, gaining in health and vitality.
Healthy people with a healthy outlook make for a healthy community and a healthy planet.
Nice feeling.....
Little Victories: Beccy Cole
Everyday heroes and everyday lives
Do what they must just to survive
They never make the front page news
But heaven knows they pay their dues
You can see the Little Victories shining in their eyes
CH: They don't need fortune and they don't need fame
They are already winners if they're in the game
They don't need our pity or our sympathy
They get all they need from Little Victories
A single mothers' wage barely gets them through
But they do all the things other families do
And the man that's 84 years old
Who learned to cook when his wife passed on
Discovering things inside that he never knew
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3 comments:
This is same thing my mind is working on - importance of little victories. We tend to not see them or to minimise the meaning.
After understanding how important they are and after celebrating each of them, we became successful and this is waht we need to be happy :)
Thank you for this post.
Ewa
Yes, Kate, these little victories are so much more important than the so-called bigger ones, every day ... And your blog is showing the way to people all over the world that they can choose, rather than have life chosen for them. It's especially exciting I think when young people get involved. I was so pleased recently when my daughter said that among people her age there's a move back to the land and growing things. She's become a gardener after growing up and leaving home, but I like to think we had something to do with it! And the blog links around the world are so important - I never thought when I started my blog that I'd have an Australian gardener coming to stay - and very soon now too!
Kate - I often feel you do so much to help me with my veggies that all I ever do is say thanks to you! I'm glad that even though I've hardly done anything for you in return, you get a little inspirational victory from it. Perhaps one day when I've passed through my busy mothering phase I'll be able to apply all of the things you've taught me and grow enough healthy veggies to give some back to you or inspire other people along. Then that can be a big victory for you!
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