The Law of Attraction (Part 2)

Last year, after a dismal RE meeting and five hours in traffic, I came home to find that my whole garden was dying. It was a big patio garden, and everything (all but two or three plants in the corners) had caught some kind of awful, fast-spreading disease. I still don't know quite what it was. I just call it The Plague.

Hearing this story, a woman I knew suggested I might be putting out negative vibes that were attracting these problems into my life, a la The Secret. Maybe my identity was getting wrapped around this idea that "bad things happen to me."

Let's back up a little. This garden was really special to me. I didn't know much about plants, since I'd always lived in apartments where gardens weren't allowed, or where (if they were possible) it seemed silly to make that investment when my time there would be short. But last year I'd had enough of waiting. Tending the garden was tending the part of myself that needed to keep believing in the possibility of growth. And the garden wasn't modest; it was BIG, lush, beautiful. The woman's suggestion that I killed it with my low expectations, negative thoughts, bad-luck cooties, or whatever, really shocked and pissed me off.

But she was right about one thing: my identity WAS getting wrapped around the idea that bad things happen to me. And it was making me more depressed. What if I hadn't been quite so depressed? If my powers of observation had been better, if I'd had more energy, might I have been more concerned about the one plant that looked sick before the others? Then maybe followed an instinct to research what was wrong, and taken action before the infection suddenly took off and spread? I think so. I think what killed my garden was 90% disease, combined with 10% ignorance and inaction.

God grant me the
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

When I think about what I can and can't control, the garden comes to mind, along with a story from a few years earlier. I was trying mountain biking for the first time. "Focus on where you want to go," my boyfriend at the time suggested. "Don’t focus on the rocks and ruts in the trail, or you'll think Oh no, a rock, and you'll freeze up and stare at that rock, and sure enough you'll hit it." He was exactly right. Not that I never wiped out when focusing on the route I wanted to take, but focusing on the obstacles usually made my fear, and therefore my clumsiness, worse.

To sum it up, I don't think special "Laws" are required to explain what's going on. I just function best when focusing outward on the situation itself, when my mind isn't clouded by fear, despair, or other internal reactions. OK, so how do we get to that state? I'll let you know when I figure it all out. (Don't hold your breath.) What I've learned so far is the importance of trying to find balance—not grasping after overly specific outcomes (I'd like that BMW in blue, please.), while still allowing enough healthy desire and will to keep moving ahead.