A few Saturdays ago I woke up late, and instead of heading right to work, as was planned and as was needed, I decided to water my plants. Upon watering I found that my lovely spider plant was struggling a little. I decided to replant it into another, more suitable pot. One with a little more room and better drainage.
The problem with replanting is that each time you rehouse one plant, you’re left with a new home, perfect for another (it’s rather like the story I’ve read about hermit crabs, lining up in perfect size order, ready to take the new hand-me-down safe house passed their way).
So there I was, still in my pajamas and borrowed cozy sweater, dining room table covered in trays and pots and rocks and dirt. Replanting one, putting some shoots into water to propagate new babies, holding up the now empty pot, and looking around to see which growing plant member of my mini jungle family would fit best in this newly empty home.
What can I say, my life rather often follows the “if you give a mouse a cookie” sort of chain in which one random choice leads to the next necessary random choice until an entire morning is gone - or a year, or a chunk of a life.
Perhaps this is always how life is, we just don’t pay attention.
Except toward the end, I misjudged. I removed one plant from a pot in which it was arguably quite content, but not quite lining up with the vibe of my bedroom. As a recent highly applicable meme stated “In my defense, your honor, I did it for the aesthetic.” I am a Libra. I am guided by beauty in all things.
I replanted some new pothos babies into that newly empty pot and found them a home in which they better fit their surroundings. I came back to the original, now homeless plant and perused the remaining available pots.
Dammit, I didn’t have anything left quite big enough. I had a long line of hermit crabs, dancing about in their new shells (plants in new pots, yo, I’ll mix metaphors all day long if you’ll let me) and one sorry big Philodendron—all emperor’s new clothes naked roots now lying on the dining room table.
I did the best I could. Found the biggest empty pot I could locate, and stuffed ‘ole Phil in there as best as I could manage. Except I could tell he wouldn't be happy long. His base protruded out of the top of the soil. He listed gently to the side. I swear he looked at me accusingly, but I can’t prove it. I vowed out loud I’d find him a better home soon. Cross my heart and hope to die, Phil. I won’t let you down.
(Yes. Of course, I speak to my plants. If you do not, I beg you to consider what sort of heartless monster you might really be).
But then, like the writer I am, I started to think about all the ways we cram ourselves into too small pots, just because that is what is available. Or because we don’t even realize how big we’ve grown or how expansive we already are.
We select a pot (or accept the one selected for us) because it looks good enough, or it appears to be the kind of beautiful we’d always dreamed of becoming.
Why do we say yes to a life that is so much smaller than the one we truly need?
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