As I move forward with life and relationships, my beginnings with learning the art of bonsai continue to shape how I see the world and my interaction with it. I have been spending more time watching the trees rather than trying to figure out what I am going to do with them. As I watch, I learn… I see where to go next what to cut, where to wire. I have an idea, but it is in the relationship that the discernment comes. If I try to force my own will, which is usually to move to fast, chances are I will kill it. To not do enough, is to kill as well.

It is recently, as new relationships, show up in my life, that I begin to see how similar this approach is with people. My tendency is to analyze, over-think, and question where things are going and what I should do. I have had more trouble than not with this mindset. Do I act now? Do I speak later? Should I call? Should I visit? Am I spending too much time? Can I commit? What if? What if not? Am I ready?

I am a finding myself to be a more refined and mature man than I was two or three years ago? The risk-taking is still there… but there is a peace, a holding lightly, that I have learned. I breath and slow down. My mantra has become, “let the relationship tell.” To know the person, to take one day at a time, to pursue wisdom and discernment… this is to know what to do next. This is to know how not to kill but to give life. Not what I think I want, not what another wants… but what is right and true.

To perceive and to know and to understand is where the direction for the next step begins. So I breathe, and I breathe again and I do… not… rush…