The stories you tell your kids will forever influence their lives. That's why I think it's important to tell stories in general, but to children especially. Stories and tales about the Great Grandma I've only met in my dreams were the most vivid and interesting stories I had ever heard, and still hear from my Grandma today.
The way everyone always talked about her was so full of awe and respect, laughter and great compassion. This was a woman that had made an impact in most of the lives she passed through, if not all. Those stories have played in my mind everyday since I can remember, have driven me to find my own sorts of paths, and have thus far inspired me to be as great as I can be, and to always try my best, even if my best is kinda shitty seeming at the moment.
One of the biggest things I remember about these stories was how my Great Grandma had a deep appreciation, love, and respect for plants. She was a studious person, and in her free time, like when a bus she was riding stopped for repairs, she would go and interact with plants. She apparently kept a huge book where she wrote down everything she learned about plants, but it has gone by the way side, into the land of tall tales and works not likely to be ever found according to my Grandma.
It's taken me a long time (long is relative) to recognize how much my love for plants is such a driver for me. Just like my Great Grandma, I am awed by plants, I am very studious (not just with plants per se), and I'm pretty good at helping others when I genuinely want to help and my heart is in it.
My decision to go into botany is driven by all of this. It's also driven by a desire to continue where my Great Grandma left off. I want to study plants for many reasons, but one of the main drivers is to help others recognize how we are just like the plants, how they are our coinhabitants on this planet, and how we can help each other live healthier lives. My Grandma jokes with me that when I was a kid, I used to love to go and tear up her plants. I used to rip out roses, break branches, and just wreck most of the plants I could get my hands on. I wonder if when I was a kid I already understood that I wasn't exactly fond of plants trimmed and placed all nice and proper like to be pleasing to the "civilized" eye. Maybe I was communicating with the plants and they were telling me to fix it because I was the only one who would listen. Maybe, but who knows ha ha.
I think of plants the way I think of a family. I like the plants to resemble my family, seemingly chaotic, all over the place, but very in tune with each other and very good at being ourselves in order to help others. We do this naturally because we learn as we go, I like to think plants do the same, hence why I usually have all sorts of plants mixed and matched all over the place, sharing soils, space, and air. Where the many parts function well as one being. Think about it, if you could personify all the organs in the body into people, they would seem weird, off key, and hard to figure out. But you would know if they function well not only by the way they make you feel, but by the way they accomplish tasks collectively. They would accomplish tasks way better together than any one individual could on their own.
I like the idea of doing what is best for both our species and others. Plants are not just here for us, pretty much everything that moves (and isn't rooted to the ground) depends on plants in one way or another. I have always known this, I have always felt this, I have always been this, but now I think I am getting better at being able to express this. There is not a day or moment that goes by where I don't thank the plants and interact with them in various fashions. If plants are actually "conscious," then I have had a dialogue with them my whole life. It sort of just runs in the family, but not just mine, the human family. Think about it, without plants, we'd be dead, period.
Many stories of my Great Grandma (and Great Grandpa) also included great feats of intuition. My Great Grandma was the person everyone came to when they were sick. They trusted her greatly, knew she cared, and knew her advice would be beneficial, even if a bit hard to swallow. She was a worker, and being dirty and close to the earth was being alive. Health isn't about how many marathons you can run, how many pills you can take, how many diets you can try out, how others perceive you, but is more about how alive you feel. Health is about taking the experience of life as a whole and recognizing that it is temporary, but also that it can be oh so awesome and awe inspiring at every moment.
The more I study about plants and think about them conceptually and culturally, the more I'm reminded that everything is all connected. We all flow into everything else, and any idea of separatism is an illusion. That everything doesn't affect everything else is at best an immature ideology, at worst a doctrine imposed on those who believe otherwise.
So despite the fact that I did not go into botany right off the back when I started college, my experiences thus far have not been for nothing. What I have learned is how to be multicultural and think globally. And those aren't just buzzwords to put on a resume, they are a way of life and mental orientation that I live and act by. That I pay attention to every detail and how it may impact other things is not me being paranoid, it is me seeing connections. As I learn more and more, I am able to make more connections, and what most people would consider me having good intuition is simply me listening to and utilizing the information I have in creative ways. Even though I say I want to study botany, this doesn't me I am going to only work with plants in a lab, or be a professional gardener. It means that I will use my understanding of language and culture to talk about and express what I have learned about plants and how they help us and we can help them. We are all family, all have the same types of struggles. Every living being on this planet is affected by every other, and we are no exception.
I'm already an amateur botanist though. I love thinking about and learning about plants. I also grow and keep lots of plants to see what we can learn from each other. I love seeing how plants can change so dramatically over time. How a tiny seed can become a beautiful robust and lush plant. A lot of TLC goes a long way. It's such a fulfilling thing to feel like you have contributed greatly to the growth of a living being. I think the plants appreciate it too, and maybe it's just because I grew them, but I think my fruits just taste better. There's the fact that without me, the fruit I am eating would not be the same. The flavor, the smell, the color, the growth would not be the same had I not cared for that little seed that became a sapling that became a beautiful fruiting plant. I love to nurture and create. Doing this for plants helps me be better at it with humans. Much of the time you have to listen more carefully. A plant has no mouth to scream at you when it's cold, hot, hungry, thirsty. You have to smell them, feel them, watch them, observe them, and talk to them in your own way. You have to learn how to be a plant. Then you realize that plants and us, we are so similar. So much so that we are basically the same type of being. Understanding that changes how you view and treat plants. It changes how you view the environment. It changes how you value resources you consume, and it changes how you treat other people. Perhaps that's why my Great Grandma enjoyed plants so much. It's my turn to walk that new path in my life that is now bright as day. I'm getting way better at listening to the plants.
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