Gardening

The following is a parable about gardening:

A very wealthy man had fifty plots of land full of gardens.  These gardens were laid out in a variety of shapes.  Some of them were square, others rounded, some lengthy, and some quite short.  The soils of these gardens were mostly good and the weather was mostly good.   The gardeners themselves—the foremen, the planters, the tenders, the pickers—were mostly good as well.

These gardeners, for the most part, were not paid a large sum of money by the wealthy man, but he respected them very much.  The gardeners were given good tools and much time to do their work.  The wealthy man understood that his servants, being as they worked hard and were well trained, knew how to grow seeds into plants.

            Life was not perfect, of course, as nothing on this earth ever is.  Some soil soured, the sun did not always shine, and not every seed grew.  But life went on, and the very wealthy man slept well at night with the satisfaction that surely he had the finest gardens in all the land.

As time passed, though, more of the soil began to sour, which made it more difficult for seeds to grow.  The sun, once so strong, began to hide behind clouds more often.  This alarmed the wealthy man.  This alarmed the gardeners.  Soon the wealthy man, although he was not really a gardener himself, decided he could help his seeds grow by giving advice.  He gave the gardeners some unfamiliar tools to use for gardening.

But still the soil soured, and still the sun hid, and still more seeds did not grow.  This alarmed the wealthy man even more, and so he went back to the gardeners.

            “We need a new way to garden.  What you are doing is not working.”

            The gardeners were not so sure about that, but they were hard workers and wanted the seeds to grow very much, and so they tried new tools and learned new ways to garden.

            The soil and weather continued to sour, however, and the seeds struggled to grow.  The wealthy man’s concern soon turned to anger.

            “Why are so many plants wilting?”  He thundered at his workers.  “Aren’t you taking care of them?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Then you need retrained in how to use even newer tools.  You need to try newer ways to tend the seeds.   You older gardeners need punished for these shorts crops; you must work an extra hour past sundown.  You younger gardeners need to know more about gardening in the first place; you must pass an extra inspection before sunrise.  These ideas will fix these problems.  If they don’t, each of you will be sorry.”

            The gardeners began to grow weary of the wealthy man’s anger, but they loved the seeds very much, and so they did what they were told and worked as hard as they could.  They worked even harder than they knew they could.  They worked hard in the day tending their fields, and they worked hard at night learning about new ways to garden.  (Although they were not quite sure the new ways to garden were really new at all, but were mostly just an old way to garden with a fancier name.)

            But the soil continued to sour, and the sun hid behind dark clouds almost every day, and thus many seeds did not grow.  The wealthy man’s anger turned to fury.  He read about gardens in distant lands where seeds grew up strong and tall, and his fury turned into rage.

            And thus he called a meeting.

            “How is it that I have spent so much time and money giving you new tools and new ideas, and still our seeds do not grow?  How is it that I read about seeds in distant lands that grow strong and tall while many of our seeds creep slowly and rarely reach the sky?”

            These were not questions meant to be answered, of course, by anyone at the meeting but himself.  Before the wealthy man could open up his new box of tools, however, an angry young gardener broke her rake across her knee and threw it to the earth. 

The break of the rake cracked angry in each ear, and before the wealthy man could reply she spoke.

            “A tool is a tool.  It cannot mend the soil.  An idea is an idea.  It cannot shine the sun.  In distant lands, some seeds are not even planted.  But in this land we plant all our seeds, to give each of them a chance to grow.  The questions you ask are hollow and foolish.  A better question, the question I ask, is this:  How is it that in a land where the soil has become so sour, and in a land where the sun almost never shines, can such a garden grow?  Look around you, and see.”

            The wealthy man, still quite angry, looked around at his fifty plots of land.  He saw many of his seeds struggling up above the contaminated soil toward a sun struggling to shine.  He saw that most of his seeds had indeed sprouted, but many of them had not.

He shook his head.

            “No.  These seeds do not grow strong because you each have become too lazy.  You visit with each other too much, and thus you will no longer be allowed to talk while working.  Perhaps then, once you only work and never talk, and if we try out some of these new…”

            But no one ever heard what his new idea was, because the sound of fifty thousand breaking rakes is a very loud sound.