What kind of plant are you?
During my coach training we were required to post something every week about what we noticed or learned, either as coach or as a human. One week I posted that I though maybe I was very similar to one of my house plants and that both the plant and I needed some TLC.
I generally have a black thumb. I tend to kill plants, either by overwatering or by underwatering. But I have discovered that I can get along with plants that communicate with me. Spider plants, for example, can live in my space because I can look at them and figure out what they need. When they are happy plants, their leaves stand tall, they are nice and green, and they shoot off baby plants like crazy. They are fairly low maintenance; they can go quite awhile without water. And when they start getting unhappy, they droop, they stop shooting babies, and a leaf or two turns brown. When they need food the color of their leaves changes from a bright green to a duller green. Communication - I love it. I have one spider plant that I've had for 4 years - that is a record!
I have another plant - I don't know what it is - that also communicates to me ... but she is not as hearty as a spider plant. She has tall thick stalks with leaves that shine when they are happy. Beautiful new shoots emerge from the stalks and she fills out. When she is happy, she is gorgeous. But she's temperamental. She becomes very unhappy very quickly - there is no subtle warning like my spider plants. She is fine one day and then totally collapsed and browning the next. Literally. I can walk into my kitchen and there she is, all stalks laying down, the leaves sad and droopy. She perks back up with water and a change of scenery, and fights like hell to stay happy, but then the sun will shine for too long or I let her soil get too dry, and she collapses again. It occurred to me that this stand-up-fall-down routine started after a traumatic week this summer. My pet sitter forgot to water her while I was on vacation for 9 days. She collapsed and no one went to her rescue. No one responded when she communicated her needs. She laid there, for days, parched. She's never been the same. Sometimes I think I'm like my temperamental plant but I'm always working toward being like a spider plant. It is so important to recognize when we need something and to learn how to communicate our needs to others before we are completely out of resources.
The post resonated with one of my cohorts and she wondered what kind of plant she is. And it got me thinking … are plants a metaphor for the human condition? I’ve heard people compare caring for a love relationship like caring for a garden - it needs water, it needs weeding, it cannot be neglected. Back in the day employers used to ask employee candidates what kind of tree they would be and then would ask why a specific tree was chosen. What kind of plant are you and why?
Image: Brina Brul
