Sometimes green doesn’t mean go

The pressure to get things done, to see results, drives me a little too much, even in retirement.  Because of this, not having the inspiration to blog about anything lately has led to needless frustration, guilt, and excuse making.  While I have been doing some professional writing as part of school reviews the past two months and have been invited to do some other writing, not “tending” to my blog was just bugging me.  Even the “green” #WordPrompt for the month wasn’t inspiring great thoughts.

Well, of course it wasn’t.  Green means “go,” right?  I look across the room at my phone charger – the green light tells me my phone’s ready to go.   The same is true when I’m driving my car or crossing the street.  Green embodies energy – even with negative things like being “green with envy” and overspending with my “greenbacks.”  I want the plants on my terrace to grow lusher and greener.  Grow, grow, go, go.

Today, thanks to an avocado seed, I learned that, sometimes, maybe, green can mean “stop and then go slow.”  There were originally two seeds and I was pretty much ready to give up on the second one.  Ever since I was a kid, the potential of growing an avocado tree was always a fun challenge.  At one time, my mother managed to get a nice sized tree out of one of our experiments.  Most of the time, however, the seed was dumped because of its perceived lack of potential.

Weeks have gone by.  Seed two has a nice root (yay!) and what’s looking like the start of a shoot tucked inside the cracked seed.  Not much else happening.  Based on most of the stuff out there, more things should be happening by now.  So I did more searching, and found a video with an Australian dude talking about how one of his seeds took eleven months to sprout.  Eleven frickin’ months!?! Of course, my first reaction was horror in how many potential avocado tree lives I may have cut short. 

Then, I looked at my little seed.  Still creamy looking with a hint of green.  OK, not giving up on it just yet.  Then, I looked at myself and thought, sometimes words sprout when they’re ready.  Sometimes, green means stop and then go slow.