Persimmon - Ripen

Dear Friend,

This week, Persimmon asks us a question:

What in your life needs more time to ripen?

Not so very long ago, most of us would have grown up surrounded by people practicing their crafts. We would have watched someone learn to make a beautiful pot or weave a basket. We would have seen the broken pieces, the crooked attempts, the mistakes and repetition. We would have watched skills develop over years, perhaps even decades. We would have understood that mastery takes time because we would have witnessed the becoming.

Now, so much of what we see is the finished product.

We see the beautiful home, the successful business, the artist's finished work, the happy relationship. We rarely see everything that came before it. The mistakes. The practice. The uncertainty. The years of showing up before something became what it is.

And alongside this, we live in a world where so much really is available almost instantly. We can have dinner delivered to our door. We can order something we want and sometimes have it in our hands the very next day. And listen, I’m not complaining! I really like next-day delivery.

But I wonder if all this convenience has made it a little harder for us to remember something important:

Many of the most valuable things in life cannot be rushed.

Friendships deepen over time. Love deepens over time. Skills are honed over time. Trust is built over time. We learn our own bodies over time. We become more fully ourselves over time.

Maybe it is no coincidence that a culture so enamored with speed and newness also tends to value youth over age and experience. We celebrate beginnings and breakthroughs, but there is another kind of beauty that only comes from having lived awhile. From practicing something for years. From knowing what matters because we have had enough time to discover what doesn't. From becoming more comfortable in our own skin.

Some things become valuable precisely because of the time they have been given.

A handmade object carries the years a craftsperson spent learning how to make it. A friendship of twenty years holds all the versions of you that person has known. A relationship that has weathered difficulty carries the memory of repair. And the relationship we have with ourselves can deepen in much the same way, as we slowly learn to recognize, accept, and love who we actually are, just as we are. 

Persimmons understand this.

If you've ever bitten into one before it was ripe, you know there is simply no convincing it to be ready before it is. You can want it to be ready. You can wish it were ready. You can stand there impatiently staring at it.

It does not care.

It needs the time it needs.

So perhaps this week isn't about making anything happen. Maybe it is simply about noticing where you are asking something to be finished that is still becoming.

Where are you trying to launch something before it is ready? Where are you expecting yourself to have mastered something you are still learning? Where are you hoping for depth of connection without allowing the time it takes to truly know someone, and to let yourself be known?

And where might you trust the ripening?

There is nothing wrong with being in the middle of becoming. There is nothing wrong with needing more time.

The best fruits are picked when they are ready, not before.

Love,
Carrie