The Lowly Gardener – Humble Like the Dust

To me, a gardener as a career is ranked in society amongst all those routines belonging to the support sector. They cater to people today or enterprises and deficiency far more superior education or credentials. They are the residence cleaners, the maid, and the janitor.

They are not revered in culture as are other professions who are in positions of electricity, command, influence or fame.  Regrettably, we label ourselves and others by what they do somewhat than who they are. Our identities are wrapped up in our do the job and individuals choose us to begin with by what we do for a residing. Until eventually we get to know the authentic human being behind the veil of their career, we are predisposed to classify all people appropriately.

We do nevertheless, revere those who are modest. Those people who are in an or else honorable profession or some sort of social leader who humbles their self by dismissing the worth of their occupation or their title are essentially revered. To set aside their sense of great importance and inflated feeling of self is to reduce them to everyone’s stage – to say, “I am not higher than you or any individual”.

In the authentic film, Kung Fu, Caine is attending a competition honoring the Emperor when the Emperor’s son asks Caine, “Who are you?” Caine, responds, “I am but a lowly priest, humble, like the dust”.

In the Tv set series Star Trek Second Technology, Captain Picard reminisces about his times at the academy as a younger scholar. He speaks of his most revered instructor named Sefarth from whom he obtained the most wisdom. To which a fellow academy graduate states to Picard, “I do not recall any this kind of instructor named Sefarth”. Picard responds, “Sefarth was not 1 of the professors, he was the head gardener”.

Textbooks, videos and folklore recognize the virtues of humility and humbleness and make figures to honor that element inside of us that we search for to possess. Yet we are prejudiced by the visual appeal of one’s occupation to see beneath the veil and to figure out these attributes. It is paradoxical that another person in a lowly regarded career can possess the wisdom of excellent philosophers and leaders.

Considering the fact that I gained a masters degree in Landscape Architecture, I have from time to time, had a feeling of insecurity about getting called ‘landscaper’ by shoppers. This internalized vanity has designed me respond to circumstances wherever I am decreased in stature from wherever my moi resides. My perception of identification is in fact caught up in my title or my career, partly because I give much too significantly credence to how culture values titles. I have due to the fact advanced to wherever I dismiss titles fully as I see them as masking the genuine price of a human being and their virtuous features, which to me, are what actually matter.

Parallel to my problem with how persons perceive me or what they contact me, I under no circumstances forgot the scene in that Kung Fu motion picture the place the priest is being humble. I have not on the other hand transformed my title to that of “lowly gardener – humble like the dust”, but I did in its place attempt to label myself as a Non secular Back garden Designer. I noticed this as a phase previously mentioned a mundane gardener who only toils in the upkeep of gardens and landscapes.

Not lots of persons comprehend what a Religious Yard Designer is. It is not a typical title in just the professions of the landscape and back garden industries. It is not even understood inside the sector alone since most backyard garden clientele are centered on the outward appearances, no matter if that is the aesthetics, the servicing or the performance of garden spaces.

I located I experienced to do substantially detailing about this newly coined title. That realization by yourself showed me that I was amiss with my promoting information. I could not succinctly point out what I did and what the gain to the client is in a brief, comprehendible audio bite. I came to the summary that it was way too esoteric and was not a viable title to use for a company the place mainstream traditional advertising and marketing methods are employed.

Probably my focus on marketplace was not getting isolated. Most likely I was likely soon after mainstream consumers who just wanted their trees trimmed or their yards cleaned up or a new patio developed. But I could do all that and additional. It was the ‘more’ that I was hoping that they identified with, regarded that in my capabilities and would then engage my products and services to develop a little something with ‘spiritual’ this means.

I realized that I was advertising something that demanded a link to be designed among the client’s interior processing of the perceived gains of the outward physical design and style manifest on the client’s property. This would involve not only the means to visualize, but to recognize the this means driving the style and design. I backed down from making the strategy a project oriented endeavor and settled for just conveying the principle by words by yourself. Concepts that people today could system in their personal minds in a way that would allow for them to determine out the “What is in it for me concern”. If they definitely “got it” they would recognize. The question then would be, do they need to have or want this sort of a garden space.

These ideas originate and are heartfelt from in. To venture them onto the bodily earth as a structure or a yard space somehow modifies what is sacred in the elements of nature, plants, earth, water, wind, etc. It is the human mind imposing their ideas on to an in any other case primordial canvas. Is it not more than enough to merely go out into mother nature or a uncomplicated garden plot and revere the ideas and emotions that are conjured up by experience?

The Non secular Gardener has no need to have to don a badge, enter contests or participate in design and style exhibitions to exhibit off their achievements. The Non secular Gardener does not care what their back garden appears to be like like, relatively is much more worried about the interior backyard garden that sprouts endearing virtues.