on abundance of blueberries, and allowing opportunities to ripen

When we are young, we want everyone to know us, but we might not be sure why. Even though we may not yet understand why, it feels better than the alternative of not being known. When we are young life is about the collection of experiences. It’s about getting as close as you can to concluding your own book of firsts. We want everyone to know us, even though we’re just getting to know ourselves. So we collect friends like souvenirs. It’s only later that we learn that all the while we were just trying to give ourselves the best odds of a bright future. 

At some point, we intuited that life is about connection in some way, probably when we were very young—infants, even. So we grew up to become gluttons for connection. We hadn’t learned about quality over quantity, but it didn’t matter because the quantity had it’s place, too; statistically it gives us better odds of finding a group we fit with. But that might come with a touch of a choice paradox—a world full of opportunity but not enough time in the world to accept every opportunity offered to us.

So as we grow less young, we are looking at the promise of a dozen or more lives before us; each one ripe for the picking. But our choices look like a blueberry bush in the summer, every berry enticing, delicious, and equally likely to end up inside us. We think we have to pick them all right now, otherwise they’ll spoil or be taken by others. The child in us still can’t stand the idea of someone else getting what we wanted, or having something that we believe should’ve been ours. So some of us deal with this feeling by trying to pick too many, and most of us learn it only makes us sick eventually; either through overexertion or the crushing weight of more than our share of berries. That’s when we learn we have to give them all back to the earth— to the universe. 

There are still some of us who listen closely to ourselves, to our innate wisdom of our internal needs, and we take only as many as we’re ready for, because we know that they will be wasted to us whether we overwhelm ourselves with too many of them, or whether we torture ourselves with the thought that they were all ours to begin with— when in reality we lay no claim to that which we haven’t consumed.

Those berries cannot be truly yours until they are within you, until you have centered them atop your tongue and swallowed them into the middle of your body. 

But, if they are still on the bush you can hope for them. You can dream of tasting them! But you can only eat, and pick, and carry so much before it just becomes waste one way or another; whether by your neglect to honor it properly with your hunger, or your refusal to honor it properly with your time. With enough time and neglect, they grow sour or moldy waiting to be eaten.

Either way, if we took more than our share, we have created lack for another while aiding in our own torment. If we do not make ourselves physically ill on them we could surely make our selves mentally unwell through the shame of our waste. 

To dismantle the metaphor, I’m talking about wasted opportunities. I’m talking about those people who take too much on their proverbial plate at once, and then struggle to give an honorable effort to any of it because they are overwhelmed with how thinly they’ve spread themselves. I see it everywhere, and on so many, and it’s not a good look. These people are always in a state of disregulation, because they hold a belief that they need to have it all to feel worthy, or safe. They may feel that they are moving too slowly, or wasting their lives, as they watch someone else’s well-timed successes. 

These people might have a true desire for all of these opportunities, and they might even be truly made for all of these opportunities. It’s wonderful and pure magick that they can feel that. But gluttony and fear are not a very romantic pair, and they don’t lead gracefully, to put it gently. There’s a reason religions warn against these emotional states.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that our choices begin in our beliefs. Because if we believe that every blueberry we have is the last one we’ll ever have, and that these are the last blueberries of the season, then of course we’re going to want to take as many as we can. There is scarcity here, and that opens the door to release all my little fears about my ability to care for myself in the form of tiny little well-placed lies about my ability to handle it all. 

But imagine, for a moment, if we took only as much as we needed, and maybe a little bit more for the near future, but left the rest as a gift to the next souls who take this path, or perhaps, to our future selves. What if we only took what we had intentions to use? What if, instead of becoming gluttons we simply held on to the knowing that we love blueberries, and we plan to continue eating them every year, to our hearts content, but this year we’ve had our fill of blueberries, and we know our future stocks are manageable chances for creativity. Maybe then we could understand that it is not a waste to leave those blueberries on the bush, because someone else will have the space for them in their lives, and next year, there will be more, as there always is.

Maybe then we could understand that we are not ‘missing an opportunity’ but rather, accepting the reality of what we can handle, and giving each opportunity we accept the time and space it needs to flourish, all the while trusting that the opportunities that are truly for us, will resurface when we have created space for them in our lives. There is abundance here which gifts hope for the future and contentment in the present. 

Now assuming we take a stance of abundance and generosity, rather than gluttony and fear, we would have just the right amount of blueberries [opportunities], thus preserving our ability to dream of the possibilities for expansion next season. In some cases, we may even discover greater creativity since we now understand the work it takes to process, making us able to grow sustainably in our ability to utilize our berry harvest with little waste. When we exist in an abundance mindset, it’s easy to leave the blueberries on the bush, because we know that we wouldn’t do them justice this time, and that all we are responsible for now is consuming what nourishes us, and putting our energy only where there is a payout to our personal progression—an excellent strategy for growth and expansion. 

Sometimes our health requires discernment—knowing when to say no, and when to take on more, really taking life berry by berry, if you will, and pausing when you’ve had enough. Leaving an opportunity on the table for your future, or for someone else’s, is never wasted. But the opportunity will be wasted if you take it on without intention or capacity to properly appreciate it. Not every opportunity needs to be had right now, despite what your fear may tell you.

You might not be eating the same exact berries a year from now, but there will be berries [opportunities], ripe for the picking every year, and this will be true whether you’re ready or not. It is no great loss to not be ready for berry picking season. Perhaps it could be a sign that these berries were not actually grown for you this year, but for someone else who is ready for the work at this time. Maybe it’s meant to be the year of the pineapple for you. Still a berry, but in a different package, with added zest, a bit more exotic. Either way, there is always abundance to be had, it might just come in a different package each season.