Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry; why the power lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal strings, our unbitted lusts…
So says Iago, in Shakespeare’s Othello. I was in the garden the other day, pulling up weeds – a nice relaxing task – when I began wondering how thinking and gardening were alike. And then I remembered Iago’s little speech, above. I had been wondering how thinking might be full of weeds, how they need to be pulled out.
But thinking a little more, as a gardener, I hardly feel like I control the things that happen in my garden. I can affect them, direct, tend and care – but do I determine everything there? Not a chance! An entire system of tiny animals exist, that I can hardly touch or see. Between excursions into the garden, plants grow – but do I make them grow? The seasons, sun and rain; a gardener does not fight against these, but works with them, cannot harness them, but responds in a timely way. The power does not lie in my will, as if my will had sprung into being of its own accord and ordered things for its own good pleasure. Moreover, our bodies are not like Iago’s image – a sensuality warring against the will, an iron governance attempting to reign over a wild dark horse. Our gardens are not our own, nor are we sovereign wills ordaining all that happens in them.
Our bodies and minds may still be gardens, perhaps, but we are not the only gardeners. And our concept of gardener needs to change – we are not property-holders, it is not our backyard. Stewards, servants, more like. Perhaps another age could have imagined this easier. And what are the borders between my garden and yours? And how do I know what a weed is?
Filed under: experiences, literature, quotations, random thoughts , Gardening, Iago, metaphors, Othello, questions, voluntarism, will
yeah wow. that’s really provocative drew.
it’s a great analogy – things constantly pop up despite our wishes, our care. we seek to sow one thing, another surfaces. wet so much of the main ‘harvest’ of our thinking depends on the foundation we lay, in much the same way as with gardening.
surely someone must have written a book on this (zen and the art of gardening???)
“simplify mannnn, you need to simpliiiify”
Thanks Doug. It’s a promiscuous metaphor (but what metaphor isn’t?)
Ho Konrad! what am I simplifying?