Pruning Brings Energy to What's Important

Yesterday, I went out to prune my hydrangeas of the dead blooms of last summer. Not being able to find my clipper, I broke one scissors and was much kinder on the second pair I brought out. There is one hydrangea outside my living room window that is my favorite. It creates big blue pop-pom like blooms in summer, and in later summer, the blooms turn a deep red wine color. I've read that you need to weed out some of the central stalks on a hydrangea, which I never do. Well, this hydrangea decided to do this itself. It had a lot of dead stalks that I had to pull out, which gave me a lot of time to muse on the concept of self-pruning.

How can we prune back the non-essentials in our lives, giving life and energy for the essentials? Many people say, if they knew they had only a few days left to live, that they would want to spend that time with friends and family and in their favorite spot on earth. There are a lot of activities that take us away from what we hold dear, and these are the things that we can prune. Here are some suggestions for how to prune the old while bringing more focus to who and what you love in your life:

1. Meditate -- a lot of mental energy is wasted on thinking and worrying about things that aren't real. Meditation is mental pruning.
2. Walk in the woods, ride a bike, swim, do any number of exercises with breath awareness, which creates a moving meditation for your mind.
3. Do: knitting, art, writing, music, and any number of creative pursuits, also moving meditations when done mindfully.
4. Watching some television can create a meditative state in the mind. However, it can also become an escape mechanism, so ask yourself which it is, and replace the extra shows with a meaningful activity (see: the rest of this list).
5. Create connection -- many if not most people in America deal with some form of loneliness. Call a friend, create a memory scrapbook, get on facebook and send random, kind messages to friends, email "thinking of you" notes to people. Get an old picture of a friend or family member, make a card out of it, and pop it in the mail. Contemplate the boomerang effect of love.
6. Serve. I watched "The Soloist" this past weekend, and it's a great meditation on how, when you help another human being, you help yourself even more. Love transforms in all directions.