leave them alone

After running today I took time to stretch before getting into my car. 

I know I should take time to stretch every time, but I don’t. I usually regret it.

  

This is the first time in my life that I drive somewhere to run. Previously it has always been ok with me to run close to home.  All of a sudden I realized there was more. 

But this isn’t about stretching, where I ran, or even about running at all.  These events combined led me to see the leaves.  Not the leaves in the trees, but the fallen leaves on the ground. The leaves that litter the ground. The leaves that blanket the grass before winter.  The leaves that are left there. 

Without driving somewhere to run, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Without taking time to stretch, I wouldn’t have touch them.  Without running over the grass, I won’t have been able to hear them.

Dead, crinkled leaves everywhere. No one had raked them, no one had touched them, no one cared whether or not they were there.  They were scattered all over the ground and I loved it. 

I remember when I was younger I had to help rake the yard, at least once every year (thanks to the wind it was usually 2 or 3 times). I never really questioned why you rake the yard. It is just something you did. We wanted green grass. We wanted everything to look nice. We raked the leaves. 

However, I think it would be better to leave the leaves there. 

In life sometimes we try to clear away the mess, the clutter, the extras, to make it look nicer.  Just like when we rake a yard to clear away the leaves, leaving beyond only green grass. 

But, it’s not real, no one is perfect all the time and a yard in fall without leaves isn’t real either. 

I was noticing how beautiful, even though dead, the leaves were on the ground. They made the ground look real, authentic, fallish (a new word). The same is true with trouble in our lives, raking it away to make it look clean is not real, it is not authentic, its not our life.

As I was driving home I was trying to think of reasons why the leaves would help the ground by taking the leaves away and I couldn’t think of any.  Now, I understand that there might be some reason that I don’t know about and cool if there is; however, what I do know is that even the ground that is not raked, such as that at the park, comes back in the spring as green with or without raking the leaves. 

What I can think of is a reason why the leaves would benefit the grass by not being raked up.  I might be wrong about this, as I have never had a green thumb, but leaves would be considered decomposition, dead material that helps the feed the ground, helps nurture it to grow.  The mess of leaves enables growth.

Similar to our lives.  I believe the clutter, the mess, the destruction, helps us to grow.  Being able to see the mess helps us to work through it, to learn from it, to nurture ourselves for growth.  

If we are constantly raking the leaves away, we are not allowing ourselves the material we needed to grow.  When we let the leaves fall, we can become aware that they are there and use them to nurture our winter season, so when spring arrives the growth can be even more beautiful.  

So, I am taking a stand.  I am not going to rake my leaves this fall, not because of laziness, not because of weakness, but because of the amazing growth in the spring. 

Hopefully, my neighbors will understand.