The Thing About Spring
This essay was originally posted June 1, 2026 to Substack.
It’s the time of year when we’re hopeful enough to plant new seeds…
My daughter graduated high school last week. We’ve given ourselves a bit of breathing room before her combined graduation/eighteenth birthday party in a few weeks, but we’ve already begun making plans for the next season of life for our family.
She’s decided to study Music Education in the fall. She wants to become a teacher, like her dad. My son starts training for football season next week and we’ve decided to list our house, having found it no longer suits our family’s needs.
These things require planning.
The ground needs to be tilled, seeds planted, then watered and cared for while they grow in darkness beneath the earth.
Have you ever considered what it must be like for a new seedling to strain toward the light—the effort it must take to sprout into visibility? It was always there, transforming and becoming, but you couldn’t see it until it surfaced. And it will take even more time to be able to perceive what a plant will eventually become. Its size, shape, and color all depend on how it’s nurtured and cared for.
I love vine ripened tomatoes. In college when I came home to visit my family, my Big Daddy always made sure to have them on hand so he could make me a BLT with Hellman’s Mayonnaise on a Hawaiian bun, with Lays potato chips and an ice cold can of Dr. Pepper, poured over ice… with a straw. I’m not sure why the specific details of that meal mattered so much, but they did. They still do.
I guess those details mattered the way my grandfather’s cologne and my grandmother’s pink couch mattered. They let my nervous system know I was in the safest place in the world.
Maybe that’s why it pisses me off so much when I encounter a tomato that’s been artificially ripened. Counterfeit sustenance and the ghost of would-be flavor aside, I have to wonder what we actually miss out on when fruit isn’t allowed to mature at its own pace.
I struggle to keep up with the speed of life lately. I want to take the time to notice the details. I want to plan my next move carefully. But everything, everywhere I go, is rushed. I can barely catch my breath.
So I’m being intentional about my choices. I’m planning the next phase of my life deliberately—at my own pace. I refuse to rush my own maturity the way I did when I was young. And I refuse to rush my kids. I want them to know the only timeline or path they need to worry about is their own.
Spring crops, calling, career, relationships, families, human beings—all things need time and space to both root and sprout. And I’m starting to lose patience for anything that doesn’t hold holy space to allow a thing to become what it is. Because any entity, system, community, or person, that would deny any living thing the time and space to authentically become itself, is oppositional to the life I’m building.
So, I’ve tilled the earth, and I’ve begun planting the seeds for my next season. I will care for them, and allow each one to become. And if the harvest doesn’t yield what I’ve hoped for, it’s okay.
There’s always next spring.
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A quick note: I have no intention of ever charging any type of monthly fee to read my words. These essays and poems are my daily offering. If the seeds planted here someday produce grain, and eventually become bread—books, artwork, workshops, etc.—those things will be separate from the writing shared here.
Thank you for reading and supporting The Common Joy.
—Mack
