Saturday 29 August 2015

Garden as sanctuary.

For many the garden is a place of release, of refuge, a place they can escape the world on the other side of the fence and immerse themselves in their own world of thought and nature. Being a gardener by trade means I get the chance to do this every day, letting the mind unravel whilst the sun rolls across the day and I lose myself amongst the plants.
Today my mind chose to settle on a recently watched TED talk (link at the end) about the means of rising above bullying and being the person you are. I know I've mentioned before how complete the garden makes me and how I never feel more me than when down amongst the plants, soil trapped in the folds of my hand and all my senses filled with the garden. I'm well aware of the fact I'm not a people person and that working alone suits me, a point made even more prominent when I see the faces of those trapped in a job they don't enjoy. I haven't always been lucky enough to work on my own however...

Many, many moons ago I was a schoolboy. A typical, scraggy teenage schoolboy at a typically inner city school, Birmingham to be exact. In this school I have to be honest, I didn't do great. I didn't do bad either, but I tended to muddle along on the middle ground, neither failing or excelling. Nothing new there you may think, this is a story repeated over and over the world across however it's all the more real when you're the one living that story.
Now most children at school I would hazard to guess generally have something they do well in or at least try to. I hate to stereotype but a lot of the boys I remember who weren't interested in the academic side tended to be fairly into the sports side, especially if that involved football a sport I've never really seen the point of. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in anything it was more I didn't have the motivation for going for the best grades, it was more about the acquiring of knowledge rather than the correct application that drew my efforts.
I had a curiosity in the outer edges of subjects rather than the central curricular part, in English I wondered what the historical Macbeth was like and how would it have looked in those days to see a forest of men disguised as trees creeping across the land towards you. I have know idea what they wanted in my exam but it certainly wasn't any of that. In Science I wanted to know what the possibility of extra dimensions meant to our views of reality and even though I included a page of ponderings on such thoughts my teachers would apparently have preferred the correct homework instead. In P.E. I wanted to know where the best place to stand on the pitch was so as to never encounter the ball! All this did not lend me to making many friends, certainly no long term friendship were ever created, however it did open up a whole range of opportunities for the bullies. The weird long haired hippy with no interest in sports or academia does not belong in an inner city school.
There were no real vocational subjects, cookery class left the school before I did, woodwork was just a way to fill a bit of time and tick a box. Nothing to ever get your hands into. I learnt everything of use outside of school, the biggest lesson from inside school is that the world is really just one giant classroom. There's still the clever ones, the sporty ones, the ones who don't quite fit in and the bullies. The bullying doesn't stop when you leave school, it's still to be found in the modern workplace, in the street, on television, in everyday media, even amongst friends. So many people and faces saying who you can and cannot be, what you are, what you're not, what you should be, that there is barely enough time to hear your own thoughts.
This is where the garden comes in, this is where you can find sanctuary from all those voices, this is where I belong. The meek city schoolboy who was lost in a world of concrete, noise and education, sat in a stuffy classroom staring out the window now stands tall in the elements surrounded by acres of garden and countryside and knows he is home.

Get your hands dirty, silence the gaggle of the world and be comfy with yourself.

TED link. Shane Koyczan "To this day"...for the bullied and beautiful. https://youtu.be/sa1iS1MqUy4list=PL70FE2F6FC2777AB9

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