"Happiness that the world can not take away only flourishes in the secret garden of our souls. By tending to our inner garden and uprooting the weeds of external expectations, can we nurture our authentic happiness the way we would nurture something that's beautiful and alive. Happiness is a living emotion."
~Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach
I love the visual, visceral (earthy instinct) of "uprooting the weeds of external expectations". Not just pulling the weeds; by doing such will allow them to return; but uprooting - firmly grasping the external expectation and removing every flower (even weeds have flowers all the more easily to be disguised), seed, stamen, and taproot of it! How liberating! Once the weeds are gone, with careful diligence, new shoots of growth - peace, gratitude, and happiness can be planted and tended.
Sometimes those "external expectations" become part of the my landscape without even a glance let alone a thoughtful, conscious, perusal. They feel like they are mine - the shoulds, woulds, cant's, all feeding on fear perpetuated by the "external expectations" of others that I have allowed to become mine.
It is time to work in my secret garden!
