20240604 - 17:09
Today I spent an hour or two clearing out weeds from the raspberry field. A small task in the grand scheme of things; an insignificant amount of time dedicated to an easily surmountable task. Nonetheless, it cleared up something I’ve been pondering on for a few months, something which has come to the forefront since I came back to Sweden, and especially since I came here to our summer house and garden. The topic of roots. Ironically then, it’s uprooting weeds which cleared it up in my mind. Perhaps this is exactly the task of the previous year; uprooting, clearing out that which has been overgrown. Our raspberry field was certainly just that, overgrown. Weeds and raspberry plants live in close conjunction, although in anything but harmony. The task was set out, and methodically carried through; tracing the weeds from their unmistakable top down to their roots, finding a cluster and seperating it from the nearby raspberry-plants, then making a surgical incision to pull it up by the roots without affecting the surrounding area. Tedious from one perspective, in practice highly enjoyable.
This enjoyment, this appreciation of the nature I’m surrounded by as I write this, this is something new. It’s something which, it seems, was soundlessly acquired somewhere on the other side of the globe: deeply entrenched in poverty, mud-roads, and the ever-increasing aching of always being on the move. More and more I come to realize that everything I want is right here: in the place I grew up, in the hobbies of my parents and the work of my grandparents, in that which my uncle inherited and my mom only after a long time of distancing grew closer to. In growing your own food, in living in close quarters with nature, in communion with the world surrounding us. In the satisfaction of being self-sustainable, of seperating oneself from the ever-increasing dysfunction of modern urbanisation without isolating oneself from the people affected. A dream born years ago, in muddy waters, not dared to be believed even as a utopian dream, has slowly grown, and is, like the lotus-flower, now starting to bloom; not as reality but as that which is strived for, as that which is worked for, and eventually, as that which is lived.
Heritage is often a question filled with strong emotions, rooted far deeper than even one’s own lifetime. It is understandable, then, that it is frequently avoided. But if healing is carred out seriously, this is eventually where it must lead. To inter-generational trauma and to its transmission to us during childhood. Healing implies the courage to look, to listen, to understand and to accept. It ends with us only through genuine acceptance and forgiving. To avoid, to look away, to distance, discourage, and displace; this leads nowhere. Too long have I walked this road on the ego-ridden belief that spirituality could lead me away from the struggles of my parents. But if there is one thing I am shown time and time again it is that all roads lead us right back to where we started. Right back home.
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