I don't like gardening.
I am programmed to think I should get up before dawn each lovely summer's morn (which is almost all of them here in Utah) and enjoy the peace, quiet, and cool as I pull pernicious weeds endangering my precious, thriving vegetables. My heart tells me I should devote several hours a week to raising all the produce a family of nine can consume, and I should take great pride in doing so.
My brain says, why? The grocery stores are full of the stuff, and a buck for a huge bunch of spinach certainly isn't my biggest grocery expenditure.
We Mormons have a pretty advanced sense of guilt. It's pretty common to feel really crappy for things we aren't doing, aren't doing well enough, do too much of, etc. We even tend to feel guilt for things other people do or don't do, if we can in any way tie their actions to our behaviors or deficiencies. And as I said before with the programming, we Mormons are Gardeners. We believe in being proficient at raising our own food and being able to care for ourselves. It isn't dogma, but it's certainly part of the culture.
Except, if I'm getting up pre-dawn on lovely summer mornings, which I am, I want to be outside running. I'm not a gardener, I'm an exerciser.
I don't have pride in a well-organized garden plot, I don't feel a sense of accomplishment from neat rows of carrots and cabbage, and when the weeds overtake the crops I think, "Oh well, I don't feel like pulling them."
But I totally want to lift weights, to jog, and to walk briskly up steep hills. This gives me a sense of well-being, accomplishment, and, yes, pride. To be almost 40 and still improving my physical condition! That's worth 20 bushels of home-grown spinach to me.
If only I could release the faint sense of guilt that whispers, "But the garden is the worthier pursuit."
In other news, I've totally revamped my exercise program. (Instead of gardening.) I feel great. But I've decided I can't weigh myself more often than fortnightly, perhaps even monthly. Because after a hard week of working out when I see the needle in the same place or (horrors!) even half a pound up, I think GAH it isn't working it doesn't matter what I do and then I eat whatever I want. Counter-productive. Solution: no weighing. Yay!
And no gardening.
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3 comments:
Oh I'm so glad you're not weighing! It's a bad, bad thing. Don't do it unless your doctor says you absolutely have to. Once a month is almost too often.
I'm totally with you on the guilt thing... It's haunting really. Oh well. We can't do everything right.
NO more guilt-tripping! Taking care of your body, which is part of your eternal identity and inheritance, vs. weeding, which, is...not. I'm all about the glory of work and following the prophet and all, but, really, no comparison. Be you, Alyson Thompson Lee, it's plenty!
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