I’d rather have an ugly garden than a barren one.
To be fair, it’s much easier to have a barren garden. It’s easier to just uproot the weeds than to till the soil, plant the seeds, water every day, and wait for results. There are too many small decisions to make when the garden is barren that it is easier left alone. You can’t make an ugly garden if it’s still bare.
It’s easier to second guess every decision when they are seemingly small. Which soil should you use? Which seeds should you plant? You can ask others what they think. Have you ever started a garden? What soil did you use? What seeds did you plant?
Weeks will pass then months, and your garden is still barren for all the decisions you have yet to make.
And then there is the fear that you won’t like the seed you planted. What if it blooms and it is ugly? What if it never blooms and you have failed? Do you really want to waste all that time tilling the soil, planting the seed, watering it every day, and then it never blooms? No, no, it’s much easier to have a barren garden.
Worse: what if you plant that seed next to another flower and they don’t look good together? Now you have a mess of mismatched dreams and degrees that are useless to you.
There are no orderly lines and perfectly curated colors in an ugly garden. In many ways, it looks rather directionless, visionless, as if someone stumbled through, mixed up all the seeds, and threw them about. It does not make sense when you are in the thick of it. It does not make sense when you view it from above.
You need a guide in an ugly garden. To tell you the story of the flowers planted because they were there. To the seeds no longer loved, but had been tenderly nurtured for years. To the empty patches, filled with ideas that have yet to bloom with no idea how they will turn out.
Yes, I have made an ugly garden — with flowers in colors I no longer like and seeds that bore fruit I do not eat. But, admire my mistakes with me. Admire the way the colors clash and the nonsensical path I have taken. No, it’s not a beautiful garden that one is afraid to touch for its perfection — it’s rather ugly in all its mistakes.
And yet, I'd rather have an ugly garden than a barren one, as only an ugly garden will be filled with endless potential.
About the Creator
Jess Lauro
Human. Lawyer? Writer?
In the middle of my quarter-life crisis.
she/her
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