Bowl of Dirt Parable

Over more than half a lifetime of fits and starts, I’ve found that life is rather more like a bowl of dirt than it is a bowl of cherries. 

Fortunately ^___ but, for some purposes, unfortunately ^___ the bowl of dirt we are given to get us started in life is usually provided to us already cultivated and fertilized and containing a good assortment of seeds of possibility.  All it needs from us – eventually, as we are able – is proper tending:  Like watering, applications of fertilizer, weeding, sunshine, cultivation, pest control, more weeding, and, in due season, harvesting.  Then we repeat the process – in addition to growing our bowl, adding more dirt, gathering and planting more seeds, etc., so that, eventually, we might even be able to share some of the harvest. 

Since our bowl of dirt comes to us with most of the ingredients already in place, and since it has already received ample tending by others helping us on our way, we don’t always appreciate, internalize and visualize the full extent of tending needed for a sustainable future.  Of course, we love the sunshine part, and the harvesting part is pretty neat.  It’s the fertilizer thing, the weeding, the cultivation, the pest control and building a bigger bowl and adding more dirt that bum us out and often seem, for all practical purposes, unnecessary. 

Not surprisingly, the more fertilizer we get heaped upon us, the more abhorrent the whole affair becomes, though, in fact, the faster we can work it into the soil, the more palatable it becomes and the faster and more robustly the crops grow.  Experience shows that the longer we let it sit untended, the more stench it creates. 

On many byways, one can encounter colorful and seemingly “divinely inspiring” virtual fruits available for the taking.  Unfortunately, these are without substantive nutrition; i.e., they are only virtually fulfilling, they last only for the moment, and they take us a good distance away from a more tangibly rewarding harvest.

Each person’s bowl of dirt is different.  We’d like them all to be the same.  (We live in a land of “equal opportunity”, don’t we?)  More specifically, we’d like ours to be like the ones we notice so richly blooming in our neighbor’s plot, or as advertised in the media.  Here, again, we rarely look for or have the opportunity to see the extra care, attention and tending these bowls of dirt are getting and we can’t, therefore, totally appreciate what it takes to produce such results.  

Some of the weeds that encroach opportunistically in our Bowl of Dirt are even more attractive and a lot more scentuous than the real fruit & fiber stuff, and we really can’t bring ourselves to pull out such bounty.  Unfortunately, the most attractive weeds draw the most nutrients, light and air from the really nutritious produce and can seriously stunt their growth or choke them out altogether, ultimately draining and poisoning the soil beyond repair. The result in the extreme is barren soil, often requiring one to start over completely from scratch with extraordinary effort to reclaim some remnant of initial possibilities.  

It is tempting in such circumstances to seek to extract nutrients from a richly blossoming bowl of dirt tended by someone else, preferably someone in shining armor on a white horse!

Finally, some of the seeds are like bamboo, which requires up to five years of tending before it begins to sprout, and then it may grow as much as 90 feet in one year!  Taking a long view and having tremendously patient persistence are necessary if one is to bring these spectacular “overnight accomplishments” to fruition. 

BOWL OF DIRT PARABLE

PART II

ATTITUDE, INCLINATION, ORIENTATION and ECOMONICS

THE PESSIMIST:  Expecting life to be a “Bowl of Cherries”, the pessimist grumpily points out the fact that it is NOT.  True to prediction, the pessimist’s bowl of dirt merely turns to mud in the rain, and bakes to a mud-cake in the sun … and the only thing he/she is psychically equipped to do is eat the weeds and residual seeds that may have come with the bowl of dirt. 

THE OPTIMIST:  The optimist expects nothing beyond the opportunity to make something beautiful out of her bowl of dirt and sees opportunities around every corner and under every clump of soil.  She gladly takes her bowl of dirt and throws seeds and fertilizer (manure, would you believe!) in it, weeds, waters and feeds it, and collects a glorious bounty for her efforts. 

THE OPPORTUNIST:  The opportunist buys extra production from the optimist to sell to the pessimist, charges a nominal fee to dispose of the pessimist’s bowl of dirt, and then sells the pessimist’s dirt back to the optimist to expand and enhance his enterprise.  (The opportunist may also deal in seeds and fertilizer.) 

SUMMATION

Get bullish on DIRT and seeds of possibility!  Choose your attitude, inclination and orientation carefully … and don’t shy from the ardor of cultivation, which will include digging a whole lot of dirt and shoveling a whole lot of manure.  The reward will be well worth all the effort!  Quartermaster