[text initially published in my monthly letter Le Temps Long 008 – Août 2025]

When I was little, my mother always told me to cultivate my inner garden. I heard this lovely advice, but I didn’t really understand what it meant. Was she talking about my imagination, my sensitivity, my uniqueness, that voice that spoke to me constantly, my desires, my dreams? I tried to follow it year after year, sometimes losing sight of it (without realizing that I had lost it, for that matter).

But it came back to me, because it was just a simple mistake, a clumsiness. Today I am an adult, and I understand a little better the power of those few words. Cultivate your inner garden. I understand how much this encompasses everything I mentioned above, and much more.

Spoken to the child I was then, it was a door opening onto self-acceptance, a stepping stone toward spirituality. All of this only makes sense now.

I love the image of a garden. It evokes for me a lively and joyful place, full of color, constantly evolving. A place of transformation. It is my grandmother’s garden, with its huge flower beds overflowing with flowers and bees. It is my father’s rose bushes, which he named (and still names) after people dear to him. A garden as an enclosed, protected space that requires care and patience. A garden, too, as a space of joy and resourcefulness, of infinite exploration. A garden that abounds, that lives, that surprises, that loves attention and freedom. Isn’t this a sublime metaphor for talking about one’s inner being?

One of my close friends uses the idea of a garden to evoke existence. We usually talk about a path, conforming to the linearity of time, which moves forward inexorably. We move forward in time as we move forward on the path of our lives, sometimes taking detours, arriving at crossroads, changing routes… There is no shortage of allegories.

But he prefers the idea of a garden. He likes to think that we all evolve in our own garden, and that it is up to us to clear, dig, cultivate, and grow things that have actually always been there. We move forward in life by taking care of this garden, making it more vibrant and vigorous, giving it the opportunity to flourish fully, so that it surprises us in return by revealing new plants we didn’t know existed.

This obviously reminded me of my mother’s advice. I found this analogy inspiring, poetic, and in a sense, reassuring. For me, the garden is a symbol of hope. Isn’t it soothing to imagine ourselves in a space of our own, just waiting to grow and burst with beauty thanks to our love and attention, rather than imagining ourselves walking alone on an unknown path, that constantly needs to be cleared?

Whether it’s a path or a garden, I wish you forever worship what flourishes within you.

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