Weeding

Recently sighted: Four very retired people: Me, Ed, Kay, Kim

When I was a kid, the greenery that grew through cracks in the sidewalk was just part of the world. Not good not bad, maybe even beautiful in its sturdy, determined proliferation.

Later on, I was told that these plants are weeds.They are unsightly and bring with them connotations of neglect and poverty - a slander, really, of hardy pioneer species that are just trying to make the place more habitable for coming generations.

With the slanderous version planted in my head, it was hard not to see the weeds proliferating on the sidewalk outside our door on Sherbourne Street as an eyesore. Hardy pioneer species notwithstanding, there are no plans for the neighbourhood to succeed to Carolinian forest (at least not for the foreseeable future), so, for a few hours this past week, Bruce and I tugged and dug and tore at the weeds growing on the sidewalk in front of our condo complex.

As I yanked prostrate knotweed, plantain and wild portulaca out by the roots, these thoughts occurred to me:

You spend the first twenty years of your life learning how to fit into the economy, the next forty-five gyrating within the economy trying to be all the things you were told to be and do all the things and buy all the things and then, when you leave the economy, you get to shed all that - all that working at a job you don't love, associating with people you don't like and doing things that bore or appall or irritate you. Your reward when you retire is living life unencumbered by the discipline of capitalism and the expectations of others. 

For some people this is a fine turn of events. They reclaim the creativity that would never have earned them a living. They return to old hobbies or learn new skills and reap all the delights of purposive play.

For some other people, they turn the other way. They say mean and hurtful things - what they may have always thought but never felt they could say. They reap all the delights of crotchety nastiness.

It would appear that I'm building toward a metaphor about weeds here, but I'm not.

My point is that even when you have perfect freedom to do what you want, you may still find yourself resting on the expectations of others - and crouching on the sidewalk yanking at weeds - and see it's not always such a bad thing after all. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen