In the pages of The Wealthy Gardener, I describe the start of the book project. After reaching financial freedom, I felt compelled to share my insights with my son. I also felt uncertain. I worked on an initial chapter for more than a month. Satisfied at last, I sent an email to Mike who was then a junior in college. I explained that I might use my time to write a book. I asked him to read the following essay and get back to me. He read it, and later called to discuss these ideas. While the following essay never made it into the finished book, the memory of our first interaction is treasured by both of us.
John Soforic
The First of the Life Lessons . . .
An adviser to Woodrow Wilson sat next to the president as he lay on this deathbed. The president felt he had failed terribly, despite his best efforts, because factions in his government would not support his beloved League of Nations.
“Those men. . . on Capital Hill . . . are killing me,” he said meekly. And the assertion indeed seemed to be true.
The trusted adviser contemplated what to say next to the dying man. He placed his hand on the president’s cold hand, and leaned toward the bed.
“Mr. President,” he said at last, “ultimately, nothing matters.”
Woodrow Wilson opened his eyes, and for a long minute said nothing. Finally he sighed, and closed his eyes. “Of course it doesn’t,” he said at last. “Of course not.”
Ultimately nothing matters?
The advice given to a dying president seems to assert that a single life matters very little in the big scheme of things. Our victories and worries, so obsessively important during our urgent days, will appear small and trivial on our death bed. This idea seems to be the mindset of those in favor of appreciating what we have, instead of trying too hard to change it. It’s the mantra of the settler’s mentality. Is it wise to try hard in life to shape our environment if, ultimately, none of it matters anyway after we’re gone?
It’s a question about striving to shape our environment, or being satisfied with “normal?” Many people in history have stepped out of the status quo and made the world a better place. Is legacy then what matters, ultimately?
It’s been said that the purpose of one’s life is to plant a tree under whose shade we will not sit. It’s a great image and a worthy ideal. The concept is that a great life will leave its mark and our contribution will matter to later generations. Sadly, it’s a target most of us will miss. We will very likely be utterly forgotten a century from now after our children are gone.
If that depresses you, then get busy. Mulling over insignificance will not make your life better. Benjamin Franklin gave us the best advice for impacting future generations. He advises, “to write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” But does it really matter? Does our failure of future impact or remembrance doom us to a life of futility or, as King Solomon intones, an existence in which all is vanity? And if King Solomon is right, should we then not struggle to shape environment?
Or is this just the philosophy of the lazy?
“Why not strive to shape our life?” another protests. “What could we be doing that is so much better than striving in life?” It’s a good question. How would time be spent otherwise, if not shaping one’s life? Are we defending aimlessness over purposeful effort? Self-resignation in the name of virtue?
Does ultimately nothing matter?
In college my class returned to school after a two-week break between semesters. The seat next to mine previously occupied by my very good friend was empty. John was the top student in our class, the class president, well-liked and respected, a family man with a wife and young son.
On that first day back the news spread fast. He’d been in a car wreck and had not survived. The seat next to mine would remain empty for the rest of the semester, a visible daily reminder to me that ultimately nothing matters. In that semester my grades tanked. What was the point? Why try so hard? If John had known he was going to die, I wondered, would he have sacrificed so much time and effort for straight A’s? I started partying a little more, thinking why not just enjoy life? Why give great effort to life after all?
My first close encounter with death rattled my cage and knocked me off balance. I faced the mystery of life and had no answer. I soon learned that trying less and playing harder did not increase happiness. It was a speed bump in the road for sure but, in due time, I got on with my life. The demands of life pull us back into the current of the river. But deep down, I never completely stopped wondering if ultimately anything really matters?
Ultimately nothing matters, or does it?
The question of meaning has been asked throughout history. It was certainly on the mind of a person who lived about 1200 years after the death of Christ. We can picture this person walking along a road, alone and in deep thought. Everything was different back then except for a single question bouncing around in the head of a human being. Maybe life wasn’t so different after all. The person pondered the question of life that has been passed down through the ages, and he was trying to figure it all out.
Suddenly the walker stopped in his tracks. He lifted his head as he came upon a garden beside the road. In the garden was a contented man busily at work, minding his own business. The gardener was St. Francis of Assisi.
As the story goes the stranger on the road stepped forward and asked a peculiar question of the future saint.
“If you knew you were going to die tonight,” he asked St. Francis, “how would you spend this final day of your life?”
St. Francis paused a moment and responded thoughtfully. “I would continue hoeing my garden.” There was nothing more said, and St. Francis resumed his work.
We can imagine the stranger rub his chin, scratch his head and continue the lonely walk in even more bewilderment.
So hoeing a garden really mattered to St. Francis? Why would he continue to hoe a little garden on his last day? What does the story mean?
We each have a life that can be compared to a garden. Many great teachers throughout history have used this classic metaphor, but few, if any, have expressed the idea more perfectly than Earl Nightingale who died in 1968. The following passage is paraphrased from his narrative:
_______________________
“A person’s world can be compared to a plot of ground. It exists; it’s there. It has within itself an astonishing potential, and it’s prepared to react to a person’s every action. In fact, it must.
Think of your life for a moment as this plot of ground. In the beginning, there’s nothing but earth. If a person sits and watches it, nothing will happen to it. If a few seeds are tossed on it, the rain and the soil’s natural fertility will combine to reward that person with a few results for limited efforts. Action: reaction. It all depends upon just what is wanted from this plot of earth. It’s what is wanted that must first be decided.
Let’s say what’s wanted is a beautiful lawn, bordered by flower gardens, with a big tree, under the shade of which the person can one day sit and admire the work. So the areas for the gardens are marked off; the soil is cultivated, smoothed, and cleared of stones and trash; the lawn, flowers, and tree are planted. From this point on, anyone observing this plot of land can evaluate in a second the amount of service, the contribution, this person is giving to the project. How can you tell? You can tell by seeing what the land is giving back to the person.
We are given the plot, and that’s all we should be given. Planting the plot is only the first step. How we tend it determines its degree of greatness and success.
There’s a story about a preacher who was driving by a beautiful farm. The fields were beautifully cultivated and abundant with well-cared-for crops. The fences, house and barn were clean, neat, and freshly painted. A row of fine trees led from the road to the house, where there were shaded lawns and flower beds. It was a beautiful sight to behold. When the farmer who was working in the field got to the end of a row near the road, the preacher stopped his car and hailed him. The preacher said, “God sure has blessed you with a beautiful farm.”
The farmer stopped and thought a moment. Then he replied, “Yes, He has, and I’m grateful. But you should have seen this place when he had it all to Himself.”
The farmer understood that he had been blessed with a fine farm; but he was also aware that it was his own love and labor that had brought it to its present state.
Each of us is given a plot to work, a lifetime and the work we have chosen. Like the farmer, we can be grateful if we have the vision, imagination, and intelligence to build well and successfully upon the seemingly unimpressive land of our beginnings. Or we can let it fall into a haphazard condition, with no real continuity of purpose behind it- with unpainted, ramshackle buildings, surrounded by weeds and debris. In both cases the land is the same; it’s what we do with it that makes the difference. The potential for a miracle is there, if only we’re wise enough to see it and to realize that our fulfillment as persons depends upon our reaction to what we’ve been given.”
_______________________________
What did St. Francis mean when he said he’d continue to hoe his garden on his last day? It is the same message of Mathatma Ghandi who said, “Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.” What do we advise kids before a test or sporting event? “Just do your best?” It is the wisest advice for adults, too. T.S Elliot wrote, “For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.” Theodore Roosevelt advises, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Is all vanity? Does ultimately nothing matter?
If one’s life is a plot of land, maybe we need to examine just what we’ve been given to work the land. We enter the world with equipment to tend this plot of earth. We are born with our mind, talents, interests, time, and an inner voice. We are not instructed on how to use these assets and so our barren plot often starts to grow out of control and take a shape of its own.
It’s not too long before we are busily engaged as young adults within this unwieldy territory. The time of early adulthood is consumed by work, love, play, and learning. These are the vital actions in the garden of life. Work, love, play, learn. We human beings will be “doing time” in one of these “action verbs” most of the time we are alive. We begin to fall into these activities of normal life and our plot, our environment, takes shape.
The shape of one’s plot varies quite a bit based on our thoughts and efforts. Like the farmer in the story who went to work on the land, we have the option to be “striving shapers” of our environment. We also have the equal option to be “satisfied settlers” within our environment. The distinction between a shaper and a settler is a difference that matters a lot in the experience of living. The shaper of life has clarity of goals. Anything being sought in life, an ideal or circumstance or status desired, is a goal.
We each have a plot of earth to do with as we choose, and with goals we can be master gardeners. Our experience with goals effuses a feeling of empowerment; the belief that life can be shaped into a beautiful garden. We will possess a mindset unlike normal people because we will clarify exactly what we want from our plot of land. We chose to formulate goals out of a mind of confusion. Goals equal clarity of purpose.
Master gardeners then engage with discipline to hoe the land with a steady, plodding, unrelenting succession of quiet but purposeful days. It’s not always fun. Along the way we will learn the satisfaction of work; the joy of progress and direction toward chosen desires. The work is not forced upon us, but rather we are excited because we chose the destination. The master gardener will know the happiness of pursuit, while others seek the elusive pursuit of happiness. The gardener lives by design and with intention.
Conversely, a lack of clarity leads to a far different life story.
We are free to experience life without goals or clarity, and on this path we will be less careful with our use of time. Having no goals, we will usually gravitate toward pleasure and tension-relieving activities. We will live nowhere near the edge of our capacities, and we will find life to have a vague feeling of dull lassitude. We will be stuck with no direction.
This path without direction is not wrong for those who are perfectly happy on it. We find decent people, many good and hardworking ones, in this group without goals. But without clarity of exactly what we want in life, it will be impossible to shape our world into a beautiful garden by design. Our average plot stays the same; by neglect to shape it, we opt to maintain it. Our ground may even grow to resemble a mild jungle more than a garden. We hide our insecurities from the outside world, but deep inside we know life is almost too much for us. Without direction, we are always reacting.
Ultimately nothing matters?
Environment can be shaped by a master gardener, and the experience of life will be one of changing what is undesirable. It’s a mindset of being in charge, even when we’re getting kicked around by life, because we have choices. The person on the path of life with goals finds the courage to change course, and sees opportunities that are invisible without goals.
On this enlightened path we will use more of what’s been given us- our minds, talents, interests, time, and inner voice- to shape life’s circumstances by our own will. We live on the edge of our capacities. We will plant seeds to get rewards that are more aligned and agreeable to our desires. Work, love, and play- the things in the garden of life- will evolve more congruently with our true selves. We reap what we sow.
Ultimately nothing matters?
Does it matter if we spend a lifetime without ever getting what we really want? Maybe it is true that every garden will be covered with weeds in a hundred years, and maybe our lives will be forgotten. But what does matter is what we do while we’re in our garden today. It matters now. It matters to us, at least while we’re alive. It shapes our one experience on this planet. A human life is better with direction. Positive direction in life is happiness.
Maybe the best advice ever given to the caretakers of this plot of earth is articulated by the “serenity prayer.” No greater instruction exists.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom, to know the difference.”
We are free to try to shape this plot of land into an agreeable garden, or we have the choice to ignore it, to plant nothing and allow weeds to grow. Just one glance at our garden tells everyone how much care is being given to it. It can be beautiful and orderly, or it can be haphazard and chaotic.
Similarly, our life is the result of our effort and focus during our time. Life will always be a work in progress, and it naturally grows out of control. It’s our job as master gardeners to control it as best we can and try to shape it. We can choose our work, love and play, or we can settle for whatever comes our way in these areas that consume so much of our lifetime. We may never get it all exactly right since life never stops changing. Like the gardener who finds new weeds and insects each day, we too will find new challenges in life that keep the whole thing interesting.
So what ultimately matters?
Master gardening is an art, and each of us will have a different vision. There’s no “right” or “wrong” in the design of a garden; but it is wrong is to not choose at all. It is a waste.
It seems we each have a choice of what to do with what we’re given, and just maybe this is what ultimately matters. Maybe it’s about choosing our own path in life, standing up for ourselves like we matter, and giving back to life our best effort. Maybe the honor is not the result, but the trying.
As for my good friend who passed away between semesters in college, it was told to me that he died in that crash with a to-do list in his pocket. What a shame, I thought then. It gave me the impression that nothing on that list in his pocket mattered. So why try so hard to shape life? Why give all the effort? But I was only seeing half of the picture in my misjudgment.
The list in his pocket existed as proof that he had once stepped back from his world and examined a barren plot of earth, and then he made plans to deliberately do something about it. He marked off the edges of the property and planned the flower gardens; he chose the placement of the big tree, and the driveway. And then he went to work with the purpose and courage and steady discipline of a master gardener.
My friend was giving his energy to life and making the most of what he was given. He chose to go back to school with a family. It would have been normal to settle for less than his desires. But he was a shaper of environment. He was fully engaged. He was using his mind, talents, interests and time. He followed that silent voice. His life was deliberately chosen. Who could live better than the one who dies giving his best? Here was an example of a human being, in modern times, hoeing his garden on his last day. We should all die with plans. It means we went down swinging.
Ultimately some things matter, it seems. At least they matter while we’re here and breathing. What we do each day matters. How we tend the garden of our life matters. How much we engage in life matters. How much of ourselves we give matters. It matters to us and it matters to those in our lives. Some things make life better for the living.
And so, ultimately, the adviser to the president was wrong. Maybe he could have handled the situation differently.
“We mortals don’t always control the results, Mr. President,” the advisor would have said. The President’s eyes would have opened slightly.
“But we can do our best, sir. We can give only our best.”
“Of course your right,” the President would have surely responded. “Some things mattered very much to me, and I gave my whole strength to these things. I lost in the end, but I tried. I sure did try.”
Ultimately, that’s what matters.
