How an ugly plant named Pork Chop won my heart

On Sunday, my friend Tony gave me a tomato plant.

It's tiny and scraggly and most of its leaves have been eaten up by bugs. Plus Tony says I need to plant it right away or it'll die completely, and I'm not sure my landlord is okay with me planting anything in our garden.

But I took it home happily, and I already love it more than my big, lush, gorgeous house plants for one simple reason: it has a name. Pork Chop.

Words matter.

A few years ago, this guy added backstories to a bunch of pieces of junk and got 2000% more money than he bought them for! Just by adding stories to the items!

As the curator of the project I thought I would be immune to the stories, but I had a really hard time letting go of some of the objects. So there's something hard-wired in us to want things to be meaningful.

We deeply respond to the meaning we ascribe to things. We can't even help it. I never meant to fall in love with an ugly little tomato plant last Sunday. And if it didn't have such a cute-ass name, it would still be sitting on Tony's front porch.

But it did. And I was powerless over its charm.

It makes me wonder, how can I use this knowledge to help me in other areas of my life?

• Can I give heart warming names to my healthy habits?
• Can I create more meaning for my yearly goals, to make me fall in love with them even more?
• Can I create backstories for my most important projects to spur me to stay consistent with them?

Maybe the secret to changing our lives for the better is as simple as giving adorable names to everything good for us that we dread doing. 😂

Side note: I couldn't type in Pork Chop's name without putting a heart emoji next to it. I tried. I couldn't resist. There is something to names, I'm telling you!