There are all sorts of reasons to own plants. They’re psychologically beneficial, look pretty and they improve air quality (supposedly).
But I think they also make you a better person. A few unrelated reasons:
- You can’t hurry a plant. It won’t unfurl a new leaf ahead of schedule, even if you pay it a bonus. Our culture is fast-moving and often prioritizes the quick win over the sustainable success. But who do we respect the most? It’s rarely the tricksters who made fast money or growth-hacked TikTok for a few million views in a weekend. It’s usually the people who stayed true to their craft, iterating on it over the decades. The unrushed people.
- Different plants need different environments. Nobody would expect a desert-native plant to need the same conditions and water as something native to the wetlands. But as humans, we assume we should see someone and everything they do should work for us. Not true.
- When a plant isn’t doing well, you’ll know: Leaves get spots, brown at the edges, get yellow or droop. Any of those could be for any number of reasons—under watering, overwatering, too much light, too little light. Pot too big, pot too small. With plants, we’re quick to try out different hypotheses to make them happy again. With ourselves, we instantly jump into a story. We feel an issue and conclude our boss hates us, our relationships is falling apart and all our friends secretly despise us. After a night of good sleep with no alcohol, we feel none of it. How often do we neglect our basic needs and dramatize our issues? Like plants, we have a few core needs for things in the right amounts. Give us those and we’ll be way happier. Often we don’t need story.
We like plants because they’re alive. But how often do we neglect the parallels to ourselves?