Thursday, May 1, 2008
Another one of my plants died. This is the second and last plant that I got from Cameron. It's so sickening. Not one of the plants that have come under my 'care' and 'concern' has survived. Except the extra hardy flamingo flower from Ikea. My red bean plant died of a skin disease by fungus infection, my second red bean plant seems to have inherited it too, and it's already grown leaves! That's the worst thing... just when you thought it was going to finally work and be all rght again, you're disappointed... again. Anyway. My first weird lumpy frosty plant from Cameron died of parasites and leeches (that suck sap?) and now my cactus plant is dying and I can't do anything to help it. Have you ever felt the feeling where you have to watch someone die and you can't do anything about it? I've felt it about nine times. My guppies, my fighting fish, all my plants (oops, not all my plants... choy! Touch wood :)) and my great-greandmother (even though I wasn't particularly close to her). It's all my fault. I either watered too much, watered too little, fed too much, fed too little, cared too much or cared too little. And I realised something.
I care too much.
I used to never get disappointed. At least not really. But now.. And I know why. Yes, it's because I care too much. I cared too much about losing what I have that I become so easily disappointed, because losing what I have is probably what I'm best at. I admire the cactus, I suppose.
For one thing, they can stand all kinds of weather. No matter what life throws at them, they will stand upright, a solitary soldier, proudly lifting their head, determined never to go down, or at least not until the very end. Even then, they do not go gently into that good night (reference: Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"). They do not go down without a good fight. They are resolute, strong, unwavering.
For another, cactus grow thorns. They grow thorns, I suppose, because they are afraid to let people too close to them. They know that if someone likes them too much, that someone will definitely be let down someday. Thus they grow thorns. Nobody can guess the cactus' feelings. Is it angry? Is it lonely? Is it happy? No one knows (except God, but that's not the point). When nobody can guess the cactus' feelings, they do not like it. They cannot learn to endear the cactus. Although the cactus will then be very lonely, but it knows that at least it will not let others down. I suppose a cactus is like Jesus. Not in the thorny part of course, but in the sense that He was willing to lay down His happiness for mere rags. I want to become a cactus... for Jesus, for God, for myself, for the people around me... or maybe only for myself. I do not know.
My last point is that the cactus gives life. In the desert where hope has long fled and perseverence, determination is scarce, the cactus is a storage place for that hope and will that was assumed long gone. It holds the hope of the desert wanderers in its thorns. It holds water. Because of the cactus' sacrifice (its life) it gives yet another life. I suppose that would be a physics principle of energy conservation - energy is never lost or gained. Only when a life is lost then is a life gained. It must be something like that for God too.
I don't know how exactly to end this, because it never had a beginning in the first place. But I shall give it a temporary ending by putting the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas.
~*Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. *~
