Week Two: Choosing Strategic Neglect

My Nana kept a dead cactus on her windowsill for seven years.

It had turned grey. It was clearly, obviously, indisputably dead. But every week, she watered it. She moved it to catch the light. She spoke to it kindly and tended it with the same care she gave to the plants that were actually alive.

When I finally asked her why she kept watering a dead cactus, she looked at me like I’d asked why she kept breathing.

“Because it’s mine,” she said. “I can’t just let it die.“

It was already dead. But she couldn’t stop maintaining it.

This is what we do. All of us. We tend dead things because we can’t bear to admit they’re dead. We maintain relationships that ended years ago. We uphold standards that stopped mattering to us. We preserve traditions nobody enjoys. We keep watering the cactus because admitting it’s dead feels like admitting we failed.

This is the real work of strategic neglect: learning to see what’s already dead and having the courage to…