Ryatt Haggerman

Coming out of the cold, dreary Missouri winter and into the warm, life-filled spring season ahead, I can begin one of my favorite hobbies once again: gardening. Though I haven’t always enjoyed it, over the past few years, I have truly fallen in love with my time in the garden. For me, it marks the beginning of the warmer months and a fresh start to the year ahead. Being able to grow something with my own two hands and make it spectacular is a feeling like none other. However, there is one thing with gardening I dread more than anything else: pulling the weeds. 

Every time my garden is growing perfectly, the weeds take over. No matter how hard I try, there always seems to be a weed in my garden. Alongside this, the weeds are always the most painful to pull. Whether it is thorns leaving me with an allergic reaction or making me feel like my garden might not survive without them, pulling a weed can be painful. Over my past year of service, though, I have started to notice a few similarities between gardening and our lives. 

Just like we may dread pulling the weeds out of our gardens, pulling the weeds out of our lives is even more difficult. Our friends, the places we go, the things we do – all of them make up the garden of our life. We may have beautiful flowers and tall trees in our gardens, but we may also have a few weeds. These weeds may have thorns and can make us feel like we can’t live without them. If we want our lives to flourish, we can’t let the pain of pulling the weeds hold us back. It is up to us to decide to take control of our gardens and begin pulling the weeds.

Well, I hate to say it, but I think my high school days are well and truly behind me. As I write this blog post, I just finished my last official FFA contest. All those long nights studying, practicing and crying over contest season, my time has finally come to an end. As I look back on my experiences, I can’t help but wish I had done more with my time. All the different contests, events, and experiences I missed all because I was too scared to take the chance. I could have done so much more; I could have met people and made memories that would last a lifetime, but I didn’t. My time in high school has come and gone, and there is no going back. 

Maybe you’ve felt the same way I’m feeling right now – like you could have done more, but now the chance is gone. It’s in moments like these, though, that I think about a quote I once heard, “The best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is today.” For all of us, it is easy to look back at that opportunity you missed or the chance you didn’t take and say you should have done more. The hard part is to look at what you can do today. To use the time you have right now is the most difficult thing to do. 

We all should have planted our apple trees when we had the chance. Let’s do the one thing we can do and choose to plant our apple trees right now. 

If you have ever met me, you know I love to take in each and every moment, no matter how small it might be. I was not always this way, though, and it has taken me a long time to realize we all need to slow down every once and awhile and live in the moment. I started to understand how important this was toward the end of my junior year of high school when I saw my time in high school was coming to a close. I realized the next year was going to be filled with a lot of lasts. My last fall speech, my last spring contest season, and even my last year serving as a chapter officer. But I also realized I never really stopped to enjoy those different moments for the past three years I had been part of them. 

Over the past three years, I had been looking at what the next step was. Always asking the question, what was the next big thing I could be a part of? It never occurred to me that I was living in the moments that were worth slowing down for. We all know life can get pretty busy; sometimes it feels like we have a million different things needing our attention. It is when all we start focusing all of our energy on is all of these different problems and responsibilities that we forget to live in the moment. 

I am not asking us to always be perfect when it comes to living in the moment. All of us have times of uncertainty where we can’t help but worry about the future. All I am asking is that we try to stop and smell the roses a little more often.