I read Stacy's post about being a seed in good soil, and it really resonated with me as I interpreted it as surrounding oneself with goodness. And I don't view goodness in terms of religion, so whether "the word" is heard or not, I think there's capacity to be good and to surround oneself with it. A former mentor/supervisor also recently e-mailed me the other day and used a plant metaphor (more on that later), so I thought of this verse again and felt compelled to write about it.
Often times, especially as children, we don't get to choose our environments. It's your fate to be born into good soil as far as family goes, and that's nature and nurture. But once we get to an age where friends are dictated by more than the geography of who lives next door, we at least get to choose who we let get close in our environments. I don't know why friends choose each other, though shared experiences could certainly be a reason, but it's the mutual choosing that means so much.
(Slightly off-topic, but this reminds me of something a friend posted on facebook recently from Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Birbiglia:
Deep down, our whole lives, no matter how low our self-esteem gets we think, I have a secret special skill that no one knows about and if they knew they’d be amazed. And then eventually we meet someone who says, “You have a secret special skill.” And you’re like, “I know! So do you!” And they’re like, “I know!” And then you’re like, “We should eat pizza ice cream together.” And that’s what love is. It’s this giant mound of pizza-flavored ice cream and delusion.)Anyway... I attribute all of who I am as a person to having been a seed in good soil all my life. I'm not an inherently good seed, but I had the good fortune of being surrounded by goodness. I was a "good kid" (if not obnoxiously precocious) growing up, a real stickler for rules (and, actually, that probably did not come from my parents, who are mystified at how they have managed to raise two kids now who will nag about wearing seat belts and littering and anything that might get law enforcement involved in our lives... except speeding, because I definitely do that and mind little when others do it too). I chose good friends, most of whom didn't party or drink or get high in high school. And I marvel today, having been an RA who saw more than enough freshmen wasted (I guess I didn't need to be an RA to see that, actually...), that I managed to find a whole group of teenagers like me who just weren't into that. (And if you were and you were just good at hiding it, then let me live in my delusion, and don't fess up.)
I didn't choose my freshman roommate, but she, too, was not a partier, and who knows what would have happened if I had been paired with someone who was, but I am grateful that she wasn't. There was validation in knowing I wasn't the only one. (Being in the honors college residences probably helped with that validation.) I never made it to a frat house in all my years of college, and I thought I might regret it, those last semesters when I realized I probably was never going to, but you know what? I don't. To be clear, I'm not trying to pull a righteous card here, because I think it's totally fine that people do that in college, and I don't equate frats with being bad soil.
I said to someone the other day here that "I would fight to the death for Penn State," and he was surprised at my fervor. Quite frankly, so was I. And maybe it was hyperbole, but I really do have incredibly strong feelings for my alma mater because of everything that I was able to accomplish there. It was good soil. Not all alums may feel that way, especially as the university is tainted with the ugly history of Jerry Sandusky and cover-ups, but I still do. Sure, the football program played a part in why I felt like I belonged at Penn State, but it wouldn't make the top ten list. It doesn't hold a candle to the new friends I made, the old friends I developed better relationships with, the degree I got, the mentors I found, and all the things that allowed me to reach my goals.
Still, I feel like most schools are probably good soil, right? Most places are good soil, if you find the right people. The thing about good soil is that it's not exclusive. Just because I'm in good soil doesn't mean that someone else somewhere else isn't. And that brings me to what Lisa, the former mentor/supervisor, wrote: You have a great ability to take advantage of your surroundings and to bloom where you are planted. Wow. Of course, it's flattering, but it kind of spun the whole idea of good soil around in my head. Blooming where you're planted seems to disregard the soil, right? Or at least, seems to imply that if one is in poor soil, one can somehow manipulate it into good soil to bloom. I've no shortage of optimism, so maybe that's what I have done in certain instances, a cultivation of my soil via mental manipulation.
The idea of blooming where one is planted is also a beautiful metaphor. I haven't felt like I'm blooming yet here in Philadelphia, but I think it will happen eventually. And though I don't know where I will be planted literally in the future, I am confident that I will find some good soil to bloom there too.
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