Just finished a chapter in Walden, and wow Thoreau is a pretty deep guy. He wrote a chapter all about tending his garden. He lightheartedly compares the act of hoeing weeds as an almost violent act, of a fight with nature to yield something of value.
"We are won't to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields
and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect
and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the
glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the
earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we should
receive the benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust
and magnanimity. ... How, then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not
rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the
granary of the birds?"
Is he saying that the human mind is like a cultivator? That we're constantly laboring over our garden called life, seeing everything our way, and not opening our mind to a beauty and truth that somehow exists outside of the domain of human reason? That we fight with our own nature and then somehow lose our joyous wonder? What's the value of weeds?
I'm not sure I get it.
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Shall I not accept the good with the bad, when the bad can benefit someone else?
Every lost opportunity goes to someone else. Money lost is found by someone else. Rain on us means sunshine for someone else.
The sun reminds me of God, and in the words of Job, "Shall we accept only good from the Lord, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10). And the Lord rains on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45).
I think Thoreau is ultimately saying, even good can come out of the bad. The beautiful birds we adore need the seeds of the weeds... How can we appreciate the beauty in the world, without knowing what it is to be without?
I thought about this interpretation as well. I think the beauty of Thoreau is it can mean so many things at once. I think he also means that, as we are tending our beautiful garden, the exact same source is cultivating the weeds. As humans we forget we are "using" nature. But its works are beautiful whether they serve us or not. And we are merely a part of it all... perhaps.
I really appreciated your post. It was refreshing to read something and post something with depth and thought!
Because he wasn’t a farmer. He could afford to rejoice in weeds.