It's not about the numbers...

(or what my dying alliums taught me about doing too much)

Our alliums are struggling this year, floundering a little.

I remember the first summer after they were planted; how they exploded, comically large, into our flowerbeds, shouting joyfully ‘We’re here!’ Perfectly formed spheres made up of tiny individual flowers, like a thriving community.

They became almost legendary. On warmer evenings, fading like denim in my memory, friends sat drinking wine on our patio and laughed as they took photos and tried to find words to express the size of them, ‘like a baby’s head’, said one, or ‘like a small football.’ The simple, communal enjoyment these flowers sparked felt like pure exuberance.

Those alliums, however, fell prey to a modern disease:

Numbers.

In their excitement at the crescendo of praise, what else could they do but divide and conquer? Propagate! Go big! Go viral!

So, they reseeded, bountifully. Then the reseeded ones reseeded again. Abundant purple and white flowering orbs burst irrepressible from the soil. Every year more. But also… every year smaller. Every year, slightly less healthy despite all our (ok, Con’s) efforts to feed and nurture them. The truth is, there are just not enough nutrients and goodness in the soil to go around for all these hungry fledgling flowers.

A cull is clearly needed to get back where we began: fewer flowers with more strength and beauty.

It’s hard to cut back. Because deep down, while we’ve heard that ‘less is more’, we rather like the ‘more’ option. We want to cling onto everything we have.

We keep a tight clutchy grip on things because it feels good to have ‘spares’.

We go big because we’re scared of being small.

We want more because we’re scared of being less.

But actually, less is ok. Less is fine. It can be the most wonderful thing.

Of course, we usually begin this way. A few things go well and we focus all our goodness, nutrients and care on them. When these projects blossom into life, maybe even inspiring approving comments from others, it’s natural to try to grow more… to reseed our creativity. Because it feels like numbers are the thing.

Mistakenly, we believe these numbers will weave together into some kind of safety net to catch us when we fall. In reality, however, they are pretty flimsy, unable to hold together for long.

Without wisdom and care, what can happen is this: we find there’s simply not enough ‘us’ to go around. Like the soil, we become drained of nutrients, weary. We flounder. We lose our way. Everything begins to feel a little off.

How we use our time, our precious lives, to bring forth goodness has always been a niggling question for me. Over this past year, I’ve read two books* about time, from fairly different stances but with a similar message. Both recognise that our time isn’t this unlimited commodity, but ironically, rather than telling us to cram in as much as possible to ‘make the most of every minute’, they suggest we should be slowly savouring a few good things.

Living our days more fully while doing less.

Choosing what is actually important to us rather than frantically planting any seed that happens to drift our way on the breath of the winds.

Breathing deep and slow from a forgotten place.

Can we do this? Can we examine the places where we’re trying to do too much? Can we risk being ‘less’?

If we can, perhaps our projects will explode into flower once more. And, whether comically large or fragile diminutives, they will hold beauty for the world.

*Books on living within our time-frame

’The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ John Mark Comer & ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ Oliver Burkeman

When we try to cram too much in....