Enlightenment By Dandelion

I’d not completed an essay in some time, the longest drought over the past 20 years, or so it felt.  No shooting star of intrigue or heartbreak or unbridled joy capturing my notice.  I wondered if a certain absence of inner quietude had inhibited revelation.  Or maybe just the need for rest.  Then the universe tugged on my ear.   

I remembered a comment I read or heard years ago of someone who said, “The one thing I hate is dandelions,” and me thinking at the time, “Boy, that’s my goal: to reduce the things that trigger fiery revulsion in me to simply dandelions.  I’d be damned near enlightened.”

I mentioned this event to Susan and she, savvy gardener, proceeded to wax eloquent about the many benefits of dandelions, nutritionally and medicinally for starters, about which I knew zip.  

The idea of hating something for reasons like the ego satisfaction and perhaps the sense of superiority that our pristine lawn demonstrates our lordship over nature as well as our exalted status compared to those homeowners unable to match our yardly perfection—only to discover how ignorant we are as pathological exterminators of a fabulously nutritious vegetable and otherwise life-enhancing member of the plant family—is no doubt an amusing symbol of just how wacky our thinking is about so many things, if not just about everything.

Especially when you consider that our every opinion has nothing to do with anything except how we define reality.  Nothing exists for us except our experience of it, and that experience is defined solely by what we perceive as real.  Such as: “Dandelions are a threat to my well-being and deserve all the nastiness I can shower at them.”

How fun it is to know that someday all of my hates will be reduced to such malarky, the gift of ever-deeper inner quietude and countless loving tugs on the ear—over lifetimes if necessary.