"On Hands-and-Knees Kind of Thinking"

"Hands-and-Knees" Kind of Job

My clients are in Italy for an extended period of time, and a list was given to me, tasks to do while they are gone.  I considered the various chores, which included some pruning, and settled instead on cleaning up the daylily bed along the front of the veranda.  As I began, the thought passed through my mind—This is a hands-and-knees kind of job; this is when I do my best thinking.  And it is. 

When I made the decision 15 years ago to become a single person it never entered my mind as to how I was going to support myself.  I soon learned that listing "stay-at-home Mom for over 30 years" on a resume' doesn't translate into today's job market, and the fact that I had experience in the insurance industry 40 years prior wasn't any better. 

The owner of a small, local nursery hired me, giving me the opportunity to grow and to thrive.  Wild by Nature was the perfect environment.  Working outdoors suited me.  As I tended and cared for the plants, shrubs, and trees, I realized later I was being tended and cared for as well.  I left that nursery position a stronger, different person than when I began.
   
In the nursery business there is a lot of interaction with people during the busy season, but there are also long stretches of solitary work in the greenhouse or in the nursery watering, transplanting seedlings, taking cuttings, dealing with a host of stock.  My mind, my life was in the process of being renewed and refreshed.



Before

After

In my world, the gardening world, the term "hands-and-knees" work is self-explanatory.  It is work that can only satisfactorily be done while crawling around on your hands and knees, cleaning out under shrubs, grubbing out errant weeds, dead-heading spent blossoms, removing dead foliage.  

The work itself is mindless, for the most part, and yet I find it to be most productive when the time is used for thinking. Distractions are minimal with a focus on the task at hand, the area beneath my nose.  There is no way to speed things up the process when doing the job well.  It just takes time.  Given that scenario, the opportunity is optimum for thought.  

While meditation is more conducive to emptying one's mind of thought, the thinking I am talking about is more like a pinball machine game where thoughts, like balls, ricochet, bouncing around before finally landing.  There are times when my mind is quiet, silent, absorbing the scenery and the sounds surrounding me; other times it's as though a wrestling match is taking place within as I consider the "Whys?" and the "I don't get it" things in my life and those of my family and friends. Often a Spring cleaning takes place, as mental junk is set aside for the trash, never to be considered again.  And then there is the time of pure, simple gratitude and thankfulness as I sit quietly before my Heavenly Father.

I am a proponent of this kind of thinking for young and old alike and would argue one doesn't have to be on their hands and knees wallowing in the dirt.  Each of us has our own personal place where we go when we feel the need to be alone and to think.  It might be while driving to and from work, on a treadmill or in a sewing room, on a porch or on a boat, on a walk, while folding laundry, or doing daily chores.  Mine just happens to include my workplace.

Life is filled with an overload of outer stimuli.  Cell phones, with texting and twittering; television with limitless channel availability; the choices of never-ending music--a time of quiet and thought is a scarcity.  The day is filled with schedules, choices of activities, and busyness.  Children are growing up in a raucous state of cacophony, where being alone with one's thoughts is a rarity, not the norm. 

The suggestion has been made that I listen to music while performing such mundane chores to make the time go by faster.  My response is, "No, then I wouldn't be able to think....really think."  

We, as humans, have been given the gift and the ability to think, to reason, to make decisions.  It is not a gift to be squandered, to be readily relinquished.  Besides, who knows what you might find in the recesses of your mind, what problems may be solved, what discoveries made?  For me, nothing equals that kind of thought process, the kind I call "hands-and-knees" kind of thinking.  Try it.  You just might like it. 

"Be still and know that I am God."  Psalms 46:10