Take Care Of The Irises

In the summer of 1939, as Europe edged toward war, Leonard and Virginia Woolf often listened to Hitler’s radio speeches. One afternoon, while planting irises in the garden, Leonard heard Virginia call from the window: “Leonard, come! Hitler is making another speech.” He replied, “I shan’t. I’m planting irises, and they’ll be blooming long after he is dead.”

In his book Hyperpolitics, Anton Jäger argues that modern attention tends to be pulled toward distant events, national dramas, and global controversies, and away from the local institutions that once translated political energy into collective power: parties, unions, churches, and civic associations. In a hyperpolitical world, political attention is everywhere, but the capacity for true change is often nowhere.

I’m not suggesting we ignore global events. But there are deeper patterns of cause and effect than those visible on the news, and we must be careful not to neglect them. Caring for our elders. Welcoming strangers. Knowing our neighbors names. These acts of care rarely make headlines, yet they shape the future in profound ways.

The Buddha also described karma through the metaphor of planting. Much of the world we see around us, he said, is the flowering of causes set in motion long ago. In that sense, what we call “current events” mainly exist in the past tense. At the same time, our present actions are planting seeds whose effects may not appear for years to come. Those unseen seeds may offer a truer picture of the future than anything visible today.

When I work with clients, I sometimes interrupt their ruminations by asking, “Yes, but who are you becoming?” This simple question shifts their attention from present circumstances to the longer arc of their lives. For no matter how stuck we feel, part of us knows that our lives are shaped not just by what has happened, but by the habits, intentions, and actions we practice every day. You don’t have to tune in to every radio speech in your head. Just keep planting your irises. That’s what you’re becoming.

Vincent Van Gogh, "Irises" (1889)