Last weekend, I sniffed the air and decided: it was time to plant the spring seedlings.
It's something I really love to do, gardening nerd that I am (Coach Will here).
I took a distinctly unplanned approach this year, and just bought a bunch of happy little sprout-lets to fill in the gaps in my raised beds.
(I'm calling it the 'We'll see!' strategy, which feels much less weight-y than the detailed plans I've drawn up in other years.)
Anyway, as I finished up transplanting the last of the tiny basil plants, I suddenly noticed how delicately I was handling these fresh young herbs. I supported them so gently, barely grasping them at all, in fear of crushing their intensely fine roots or bruising their bright green stalks.
As I finished up and patted the dirt around those same stalks, now jutting confidently out of the ground, I caught a whiff of their incredible perfume. All at once the vibrancy of late summer flashed through my brain, when they will be bush-like and laden with jewels of green leaves.
The power of the smell, the strength of it, caught me off-guard. I wasn't prepared for this sudden reminder of basil's essential, incredible part of my remembered life story.
And that's how it is with strength, something I tend to think a lot about…
The word--"strength"--tends to be thrown around like we all know exactly what it is. But in reality, it is many, many things.
It can be the strength to lift hundreds of pounds from the ground up over your head.
It can be the strength to keep going for hours, days, or decades.
It can be the strength to tell the asshole to go away, or to leave the asshole behind.
And it can be the strength of a single whiff of a tiny basil plant, strong enough to evoke powerful memories.
Because strength as a concept is not about the measured size of the force, but about the impact of that force.
This is why I wanted to write to you today.
It's so easy to slip into a binary world--of right/wrong, strong/weak, able/disabled--and that arbitrary distinction does not serve any of us, actually.
It only serves to make the world easier to think about, but doesn't bring us closer to reality.
So while Hannah and I are excited, delighted even, whenever we get to work with people on getting stronger, we also see that 'stronger' as …. not just one thing.
Instead, stronger is the way that person can become more effective at being themselves, and their strength will be as unique as their fingerprint.
Because strength is a many-splendored thing.
Here's to finding your gold,
Coach Will