[TRG] The Golden Garden, or a Lesson to Be Learned

Day 2,931, 20:46 • Published in USA USA • by J.A. Lake

Recently an article was published, directed at the Socialist Freedom Party and the Black Sheep Party. We were told that the time for revolutionary rhetoric was done, and that an era of conformity must come lest we find ourselves sliding into obscurity.

An analogy with a garden was used, and we'll use the same here.


Imagine, if you will, a elderly gardener and his two sons. The elderly gardener looks about him with reverence, prideful of his job at maintaining the trees and plants around him. He speaks at length with his sons about how they, too, can be gardeners of his caliber if only they do what he did, as he did it, to achieve their gardening goals.

For their part, the children are horrified. Their father is speaking to them in front of a row of gnarled monstrosities. These trees, though ancient and standing, don't even appear to be alive. Their roots, though strong, rend the very ground and make it treacherous to walk. Their trunks, thick with age, are gnarled and grotesque.

You can be a great gardener, too, my sons.

"Look at these majestic trees, so beautiful to behold," the father chanted, throwing his hands to the air and grinning. "Your own saplings should one day look like these."

The boys looked to their saplings, young and lively with golden bark and verdant branches. They looked again at the awful hulks blighting the ground before them and shivered.

Must our trees look like that, they wondered. Must we garden in such a way that produces that thing?

Their father saw their aghast expressions and chuckled. He placed a weather-beaten hand on each of their shoulders. "There is no other way to grow a tree, boys. If they do not look like mine, they are wrong. It is what's best for the garden. If the trees are grown like this, no other people will come through and step on the grass, or smell the flowers."

"Father, if no one visits the garden, why do we maintain it?" one boy asked, drawing a baleful glare from his father.

"Because the garden must be protected. Should another enter it, it will cease to be special. It will cease to be ours."

The boys exchanged another glance. The garden sat on public land, secluded in a corner of a park hardly anyone visited to begin with. By any definition the garden was not strictly theirs. Father worked for the town, he didn't own the land.

"There is only one way to garden, my boys. You can approach it however you like, but in the end you must do it my way or fail," Father warned, removing his hands from their shoulders.

"Father-"

He raised a hand, ignorant to their pleas. "There is only one way. Choose- follow me and raise your trees like mine, or cast them into the dust now and save the family the shame of your failure."

Years later the sons, now grown men, strode through that old park as they had with their father so long ago. They found that corner their father had cultivated with its twisted, fearful trees of which he was so proud. Long had they stood, yet now they stood alone, avoided by all. When the time came for the park to clear them out, no one stood in their defense- not even the sons.

Beyond stood their garden, planted with care and tenderly maintained. Two great golden trees stood in the center, beautiful and strong. They had rejected their father's teachings, rejected his foul trees and their poison fruit. He had spoken falsely, there were other methods to grow a tree.

They watched for beetles, diligently pruned dead foliage, and maintained the grass and shrubs. People walked from all corners of the park and indeed of the town to see those golden leaves and the beautiful grove the gardener's sons had built.

I trust the imagery here wasn't too heavy-handed. There can't necessarily be one way to grow our garden. If the old way yields old, gnarly trees then perhaps there is room for a new way. Thinking like the Father will only lead to more ugly trees with broken branches and twisted roots.

Perhaps he should have had faith in his sons? Unfortunately, only time can tell. The process of growth and change is slow and exhausting. Not every avenue explored will be the right one- in fact, most won't be. Traveling straight ahead, though, will inevitably lead you to a wall, a tree, or a fork in the road. Then what?