What is a weed anyway?

Education for the Future | Personal Journal & Field Experience | July 25, 2008 | 1 hour field work

We recently re-landscaped our front yard and have been spending the last month planting in our terrace garden a variety of vegetables, fruits and other garden plants. Natural to this process is going through the step of choosing what to plant and more so in our case, what to pull out versus transplant. The process of pulling out or transplanting has been causes me some heartache. We have been trying to set in a ground cover that we like but the space it is in, is becoming fertile ground for 'weeds'. The 'weeds' don't look dramatically different from the ground cover in terms of what they do for the yard or how we can use the yard but they are not what we want so they need to go.

I was pulling some of these 'weeds' out while working alongside my busy 13 month old. As he reached for the ground cover, I would promptly say 'pyari, pyari' (which translates from Hindi to 'lovingly, lovingly'). However, when he reached for a weed, I would say 'gunju, gunju' (which translates from Telegu to 'pull it, pull it'). After a few minutes of this, it became apparent to me that our innocent little chap has no clue why it is okay to pull out one plant while not another. He is non-discriminatory in his interactions with these plants. That made me pause and wonder, "what is a weed, anyway?"

The plants that are useful to us are not weeds, the ones that are not useful are weeds. Our needs change and so does our definition of weeds. The flowers we enjoyed last summer are weeds this summer, the blackberry bushes that give us fruit for jam are not weed when they are on a farm but they are weeds when they are in our clean yard. We are so discriminating.

It also struck me how this is similar to our way of treating other objects, animals and people. Those that are useful to us are friends, those that are not, are to be discriminated against. Today rats are a pest, tomorrow if they are what furthers cloning research, they will be pets. Today, we need oil. Tomorrow when we have a better resource, we won't value it. Today, the person I marry is my sweetheart, tomorrow if we have a fight, I will divorce him. On and on. We use plants, animals, our land, our people, even those we claim to love. We are constantly discriminating.

Where does this discriminatory nature come from? Our conditioning, based on our societal values make us seek productivity for achievement. We are a productivity, achievement oriented culture. To be productive, things, people, resources all need to be useful. If they are not, they don't matter. That is where it is all rooted. Go one step deeper and ask why we are so productivity and achievement focused?  Because they make us feel good. Our society rewards those that are productive. We want those rewards. We rely on them to feel good about ourselves. So, we need to be productive, we need to use. Heck, we MUST use. And, so we use. Use, use, use all the time.

Don't get me wrong when I say this. Am I implying that productivity is bad? No it is not but it has its place in the world. Productivity cannot be the goal of our work and our existence. We need to be productive when we need to be — when we need to grow food so we can survive. However, we seem to want to be productive all the time, in every way, always busy, always doing. In the process, we fail to see what is, what is needed, we fail to stop and smell the roses and love the roses not because they are beautiful and so useful to our sense of aesthetics but because they are what they are.

Can we stop to just smell the roses because they are there and we can smell? What a gift that would be! Maybe then we will stop to listen to those that are not so useful. Maybe, oh, maybe we'll find a different dimension of living, one that is not about being useful.

Maybe, then the weeds will not be weeds based on our use of them. They will be what they are, not what we make them out to be. And, from that understanding, the right actions will follow. Maybe then, it won't be all so confusing to my 13 month old.