LiDona Wagner

Breaking Rules

Crepemyrtle seriously blooming in spite of topping it off last year.

Needle-nosed pliers had come to my rescue numerous times when my shiny silver shredder jammed. But after twenty years of diligently chewing through hundreds of pages, the plastic around the metal grinding teeth inside the machine had become brittle. When bits of it began breaking off, intensifying the frequency and intensity of jamming, I acknowledged it had reached a stage of total stuck-ness. 

One to three year Maples from my tree nursery.

This was not unlike the personal stuck-ness that had forced me to sell my townhome and move to a 55+ community. Letting go of the intense stress leading up to and culminating in the sale and then moving turned out to be more challenging than I expected. So, I retreated; spending June unpacking boxes and moving into my rented one-bedroom cottage and July settling in – hanging pictures and setting up the garage studio/classroom. Focused on settling in and not knowing anyone in this community, I unconsciously went about making my rental cottage comfortable and exploring transportation options. Having chosen to avoid the community café to resist unhealthy temptations, I seldom ran into other residents.

Driveway Garden

By August it was time to shift gears from hiding in my home to meeting members of my community. I discovered that, like the worn-out shredder, I had become stuck in life patterns that had to be dispensed with. Enter Scott Thorpe’s How to Think Like Einstein, Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius. What Thorpe helped me see was that the rules I need to break are ones I created and upon which I have depended. One old rule had to do with ‘hiding myself’ so as not to ‘stand out’ as being peculiar. 

Three-year and two-year Maples.

Meeting neighbors and making new friends is not unlike being a young adult going through the awkwardness of leaving home and finding oneself among strangers whose life experiences are different and whose patterns of relatedness are downright weird. I soon discovered that: Oops! Hiding isn’t working!

 

Porch Buddha

No one else has a three-foot Buddha on their front porch or takes the bus for grocery shopping. There aren’t other ceramic-planter gardens on driveways, other tree nurseries, or other women dragging a seven-foot-tall Japanese maple from one side of their property to the other. I have met no one else exploring surrounding streets on foot to get a bigger picture of the neighborhood.

 

There is no doubt that I am exposed and I am peculiar. My ‘hiding’ rule was broken by happen-chance. Now I am trying to recognize other self-created rules that I need to break.

 

Three-year Maple hosting a three-month Maple.