A Different Yardstick – A More Earthy Measure of Success

by Bill Chisholm

For the past twenty-five (plus) years I’ve in part measured my success in the fall with the planting of my garlic.  The challenges in getting the garlic in the ground before the cold of late fall have been many and varied, including time away working disasters, political campaigns, caring for loved ones, chasing down nuclear waste trucks, public hearings, demonstrations, ranch work and other distractions, but I always got the garlic in.  Getting it in early gives it a chance to get established.  The earlier I get it in the better are the odds that it will get a timely mulch, as opposed to the rushed haphazard mulch to beat a cold snap.

The planting of the garlic is more than a gardening thing, it has been something that connects me to the seasons, has been a soul redeemer when I’ve grieved the loss of a love or a loved one.  It is a meditation, sometimes much more conscious than at other times, but always a way to focus on something besides myself or the events of the world.  In some ways, this year was not much different from others; only this year there seemed to me to be a deeper meaning to the planting of the garlic.

The past several months I’ve been extremely busy, with carpentry work, ranch work, and activism including doing some seminars on climate change / energy and how to assess both the global and personal aspects of those issues.  I’ve been doing a great deal of reading, of studying and thinking about the state of the world.  It is perhaps that which made this year’s planting of the garlic more meaningful.  In many ways it is a declaration of hope and belief in the future, despite overwhelming evidence that the future is very precarious.

Indian summer hasn’t come in a big block this year, it has come in spurts, so I took advantage of one of the spurts to prepare the beds, and then next day after a hard day’s work, a short nap and renewed vigor, I split apart the cloves, scraped a trench and planted the garlic.  It felt extra good, a simple task.  As I was leaving the garden I was thinking about the satisfaction that I felt. Reflecting on what Al Gore said upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on bringing about awareness on climate change being “a moral, a spiritual” issue; I felt that an extra sense of accomplishment in that regard. I used no fossil fuels in turning the garlic beds; I used a wheel barrow to haul my mule’s manure and compost to the garden.

I continued thinking about what it is that has us so sped up, that our consumption of material things and some obscure definition of wealth and success has us so disconnected from this incredible planet Earth, our home.  I had just read the following quote by Laurena van der Post in the Sunbeams section of The Sun, and thought it very relevant. “Story by Jung of a conversation with a chief of the Pueblo Indians: Jung asked the chief’s opinion of the white man and was told it was not a high one.  White people, said Ochwiay Biano, seem always upset, always restlessly looking for something, with the result that their faces are covered with wrinkles.  He added that white men must be crazy because they think with their heads, and it is well-known that only crazy people do that.  Jung asked in surprise how the Indian thought, to which Ochwiay Biano replied that naturally he thought with his heart.”

We are cajoled over and over by the marketing men and women that if we are to be successful we must have the most and the latest of everything.  This seems to tie into what Ochwiay Biano was talking about.  It is a head thing this need, to be cool, to be in.  It really makes no sense, it is destroying the environment and leaving us broke.  So I had to ask myself, why are people so easily influenced to participate in this destructive behavior?  Now I know from my marketing classes in college that it is easy to play on people’s insecurities, their need to feel beautiful or handsome, or popular.  What then are the forces that make us feel less than to be susceptible to that kind of marketing.

There are easily definable social influences that create the kind of yardsticks that can make one feel out of it.  Beauty is constantly being defined and re-defined to keep one off balance.  Trends are set, fashions created and changed again and again.  Money has been used as a yardstick. But how does it work when some folks are paid millions of dollars to act or play a game, when others labor to provide food and make nothing?  These are all external yardsticks. The pursuit of materials to fulfill the criteria of material success takes a huge amount of resources to create and a huge amount of energy to create and transport.  They are also taking a huge amount of space to store or to dispose of when they are no longer in vogue or the newness has worn off.  And in the end are we happier for the work it took to get, or the satisfaction that it brought?

As I thought about this there seemed to be something more to the story about why we are made to feel less than whole, less than connected.  It is true that one group wanting the resources of another must demean or disenfranchise the other in order to justify victory.  This can cut along racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, or even species differences, but it doesn’t answer the why of it.  It is “a moral and a spiritual matter”.  Tat Tvam Asi, thou art that, it is all one, it is all connected.  Now there is a different yardstick by which to measure things and one’s actions.

It came to me that perhaps the key to this lack of self-esteem, this disconnect of head and heart and home (Earth) came at least in part of Western man from religion and the idea that we are all sinners, or that one group is the “chosen people of God”.  Now there are a couple of yardsticks to lower one’s self-esteem.  I never really bought into that rap, so I asked a friend what she thought.  We had both grown up with religion, different ones, but had moved beyond them.  We talked about how the yardsticks those religions had placed on us, the lenses which they had used to define things had influenced not only ourselves but the relationships that men have with women, one race with another, one religion with another and even our relationship to the Earth.

The one thing that the marketing man and the religious have in common is the need to define our attitudes in the head and not the heart, to define things externally rather than internally.  A lot of things make less sense when viewed from the heart instead of the head.  I remember once sitting and listening to Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone spiritual elder.  English was his second language and as I listened I moved between my heart and my head.  When I listened with my heart he made total sense, when I listened with my head, I couldn’t always follow his train of thought.  It all is starting to make sense.

It is not just our relationship to the Earth in regard to climate change that is “a moral, a spiritual matter.”  It is also about our relationship to ourselves and that influences how we act and interact with the world around us.  It is our yardstick, the criteria by which we measure our selves and our actions that in turn impact those around us and this home we share with all other life forms.

The planting of the garlic was a simple act, one that connected me to the garlic and to the Earth, to the soil, to the humus, the worms, the shovel and the wheelbarrow, to my mule.  That simple act brought forth not only a sense of success, but a much deeper connection to the world around me.  I wrote one of my sisters about the planting of the garlic and this was her reply.

“Your garlic planting is a perfect example of mindful living. I think it was on Sunday’s 60 Minutes program that they did a feature on some preacher who makes people believe that they are good, and God loves them, so they should be successful and wealthy. One more twist on that same awful line which feeds the push for more and more consumption. And there are always studies finding that riches and happiness don’t go hand-in hand at all. I love the stories about people in Micronesia who live in their boats mostly, and don’t even have words for time or want, or even how old they might be. They are healthy, loving, and very good stewards of the earth because they only catch fish when they are hungry, or gather fruit if they come upon it, but don’t want to possess anything because it hampers their nomadic way of life. God must really love them a lot. ………”

We need a different yardstick, a different measure of what it means to be successful.  Actions coming from the heart will result in a far different outcome from the world we have created for ourselves and future generations; perhaps something as simple as planting one’s garlic in the fall.