Ripping Out Perfectly Good Flowers

I spent some of today gardening, and for the first time I ripped out a perfectly nice flowering bush, one which I chose and purchased and planted just a few years ago. And it felt great. It made me think of ripping out knitting--not just a few stitches or rows because you've made a mistake, but ripping out entire garments, well on their way to completion. I've done that a few times, and it felt great. And I've wondered why it feels so good, much better than correcting a little mistake and even better than pulling out weeds, which never belonged there in the first place. Today, I think I had a realization: it feels good because it's hard won, because getting to the decision to pull out something we planted, or knitted, or chose in life takes a lot of thought and care. I'm not one for ripping things out willy nilly: I place a very high value on fidelity and staying the course. But sometimes we realize that the plant that looked so pretty in the pot at Home Depot really is three feet tall and the leaves are sticky and it smells weird and the flowers only appear briefly and we don't even like that color blue. And at those times, realizing that we made a mistake in Home Depot--and that we have the power to correct that mistake now--can be pretty liberating. I do *not* wish you fun times pulling and ripping things out, whether in gardening, knitting , or life. A beautifully completed sweater or a plant that flowers in a blue we do like is still the better prize. But when you do have to rip things out, I hope you know that realizing a mistake is a kind of wisdom, too.