The Mirror in the Garden

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

Looking into the soil of a garden can be like looking into a mirror. You are bound to notice things about yourself that you might otherwise miss. Making the necessary adjustments, so you like what you see, is the ultimate reward.

Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, Steven Rinella, page 91

Background

This is a book about how to raise kids who are engaged with the natural world. Each chapter focuses on a different activity like camping, fishing, foraging, and hunting. These sentences concluded the chapter on gardening.

What makes it wonderful?

In an age of Instagram filters and video games, it’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking we’re perfect.

Don’t like the way you look? Change it with an app.

Down by 15 with a minute to play? Restart the Xbox, and the loss never happened.

These make believe worlds don’t give us the feedback loops we need in order to improve. When you never fail, you don’t learn how to do better next time.

But when you’re tending a garden, failure is inevitable.

The rabbits will eat the rhubarb. The broccoli will have bugs. The tomato plants will tip.

And you’ll have no choice but to ask yourself:

“How can I fortify the fence?”

“What will keep these bugs away?”

“Where can I find stronger stakes?”

When you answer these questions—when you correct your failures—your garden improves. You harvest more food. Your veggies taste better. You feel pride and accomplishment.

It’s no different from finding and fixing your flaws after looking in the mirror.

Let's get technical

One of the major themes of this book is helping your children become confident and self-sufficient. So why is tending a garden important? It’s a perfect metaphor for improving yourself.

A metaphor is a comparison between two unrelated things. And although they’re unrelated, the qualities of one translate to the qualities of the other.

In this case, looking into the soil of a garden isn’t literally like looking into a mirror. The soil doesn’t show you a reflection of your face. But it does point out your shortcomings.

Like you might notice the extra pounds in your mirror, you may notice the extra weeds in your garden. And once you notice, you can take action to correct the problems. When you take action to correct the problems, the reflection turns into a picture you’re proud of. A reflection of the work you put in to improve.

And that’s precisely why this metaphor is so powerful. It concludes the chapter on gardening and summarizes in three sentences how gardening helps raise confident, self-sufficient kids.

Sometimes a metaphor is the perfect way to conclude. It lets you restate your point in a unique way—a way that may resonate more than everything that came before it. So next time you're wrapping up, use a metaphor to put a fresh face on your old idea.

Happy writing,

Joe