Compost

This will likely be the first of many musings on compost, because I think compost is really cool. You can put so many things into the compost, and like magic, these things turn into fertile soil. Some of the things I put in the compost hold good memories, like the pumpkins I carve with friends every year. Other things are embarrassments- that soup I couldn’t get myself to eat as leftovers, so it went bad. Then there are the mistakes, such as the Aloo Gobi experiment that ended in disastrously bad flavor. All sorts of endings go into the compost- the end of a colorful summer goes in as stalks of many plants that flowered gloriously. All of these- the glory, the mistakes, the shame, the joy- all go into the compost to die and then transform, so that they can feed the living plants.
In life, we can “compost” our diverse experiences if we strive to make meaning of them and then let them go, rather than try to hang on to them long after they have passed. We hang on to experiences by living in regret, or trying to recreate something that no longer exists, or even just trying to avoid painful memories. When we are open to the experiences we’ve had, and we find meaning, no matter how difficult the memory, we can then release it to decompose and then fertilize our experience that is alive right now.