opening

This relates a bit to rearing children, to managing a romantic relationship while rearing chidren, and to whatever energy might be left over for managing a career. I've been pushing myself to be effective, keeping everyone fed, maintaining some semblence of order in the home, supplying empathy for anyone in need of it, committee work, all the thankless jobs that have turned this once vital and ambitious young man into an underemployed, disheartened, middle-aged harpie. Where was all this effort getting me? There has been the occasional expression of gratitude, sometimes a bit of satisfaction when a goal is met, a glimmer of an opportunity opening up- but by and large no real feeling of effectiveness. Instead, something more like a treadmill. My opening; I remembered trying to keep my garden weeded. The lawn seemed to be leaking into a flower bed, I spent two or three years yanking out an area I thought was grass only to find it reappearing in a week or so- I mean, I was stubborn, but I was getting no where. When finally I had given up and set my sights on a new garden bed, I was completely amazed to find that this clump of grass that grew to the size of a trashcan repaid my efforts to destroy it with hundreds of purple flowers, closing up each night, but lasting all summer long- and every year after, a display that completely overshadowed my lame attempt at introducing some garden center perennial into the bed. I won't moralize here, it would only lead to a ,well, a what? of metaphors (such a dangerous language) Who won't recognize their own frustration- who will not have had such a surprize. Do what you can to develop a new synapse that links one to the other.