When I was young -- early in my teens, perhaps -- I asked someone a question. This question was probably the result of way too much recent yardwork. I say this because somehow, out of the millions of possible things for kid to be curious about, I had narrowed it down to this:
Just what does it take for a plant to be considered a weed?
This was one of the many random and inconsequential questions a boy asks as he grows up, along the lines of "Why do stars twinkle?" and "Why does my pee smell after eating asparagus?" The answer didn't really matter; it was just a question in search of any sort of answer.
I remember thinking that there might be something in its makeup -- some mutant-like biological characteristic -- that puts a plant into this unfortunate category. Something that gives it inescapably bad standing in its ecological niche, like how horribly fast it grows, or how crazily far it is able to cast its seeds, or some other innately offensive attribute.
I do not remember to whom I offered this question. I do, however, remember the answer. And, that I was pretty well stunned when I heard it. It was a truth I never expected and wasn't ready for. To this day -- many, many years removed from my boyhood -- I remain surprised by its impact.
A weed, I learned, is a plant that is growing where it is not wanted.
It probably says something about me (though probably not good) that I wanted weeds to just be inherently bad. Maybe this would have justified the fate that I had recently delivered to so many of them, or maybe identifying that special trait might have fueled grand schemes of someday becoming famous by finding a way to reduce their "weedosity." Whatever the case, the notion that it's not really the plant itself, but where the plant is, that makes the difference, never occurred to me.
It meant, suddenly, that any plant could be considered a weed, given the right (or rather, wrong) situation. Even the most beautiful, well-behaved, well-chromosomed plant could see all those perfect scores wiped out by simply picking the wrong spot. To be honest, though, these aren't what immediately struck my young mind. It had nothing at all, actually, to do with plants. What had just frighteningly dawned on me was this:
I myself could qualify as a weed. I could be one right now.
Okay, I admit this is painting a somewhat melodramatic picture. It's not like I broke into a cold sweat and worried that I was blind to a massive misjudgement of how I stood in my ecological niche. (Though as a shy and somewhat insecure teenager, I might have been prone to this.) It's just that, maybe for the first time ever, I had begun to appreciate that it's "who I am" plus "what I do" that add up to the final result -- and, that the second of the two terms in that equation is not insignificant. It's kind of scary if you'd been assuming all along that everything was hunky dory and you were really quite a show specimen, but now you have the spectre of some kid with a shovel looming over you!
And yet, there's an out; maybe two. These didn't occur to me then, but they seem apparent now. The Parable of the Tares and the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) provides some insights.
First, this "growing where not wanted" idea means there's a subjective judgement involved. Who exactly decided this spot was good or not? Since it's not based on a single irrefutable fact about me, there could be many different viewpoints to weight. Which matter, if any? The parable suggests it comes down to paying attention to the one who's doing the gardening!
Second -- and this is pretty comforting -- this means I don't need county fair blue-ribbon DNA to have a low weedosity quotient. I can have all sorts of faults, but just be growing in the right place, to score high. Those tares might have been spared the fire if they had played out their act somewhere other than the wheatfield.
Okay, a third (also comforting): I have time. The separation of weeds from wheat comes later -- no looming shovel about to whack my branches and tear at my roots. Even in the prime of my mid-life (ha!) it's nice to know that as I keep working on my growing act, I'm having an impact on the final result.
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