The Parable of the Tomato Patch

I’m growing a vegetable garden again this year, but it’s not going well. I have eleven tomato plants, three zucchinis, and eight chile peppers, and they look great. I should be swimming in vegetables by now. But there’s hardly anything on them.

Last year, the tomatoes suffered because a tropical storm blew through in the spring and broke the vines, which I’d been training up a trellis. But this year, it’s all my fault. I water and weed, and do all the things a good gardener should do – or at least most of it. 

But last spring I’d been very busy and never got around to fertilizing the beds like I should have. I went ahead and planted the seedlings anyway, crossing my fingers, but wishing didn’t make it so.

And now, I’m still too busy to solve the fertilizer problem. I keep looking at the big green plants and longing for a fresh, home-grown tomato, but putting fertilizer in the garden just never rises to the top of my very long to-do list.

Just to rub it in, last week I was walking up the road and a neighbor I don’t know very well came out of her house with her hands full. She called out for me to come over and soon I saw what she was carrying – an armload of huge, beautiful tomatoes. They were so big, a single one would make a meal.

I took them home and ate one right away, sliced with salt, thinking, if I had only fertilized my garden, I would have tomatoes like that, too.

It goes to show, some things are indispensable. Like fertilizer.

Of course, people are like tomato plants – they need certain kinds of nourishment in order to grow and be fruitful. Babies have to have love and attention, including physical stroking, in order to thrive. In school, I learned the basic human needs were food, water, air, shelter, clothing, and sleep, but of course that’s only the bare minimum for physical survival. To thrive – to flourish – you need a lot more.

In the 80s and 90s, the self-esteem movement said people need to have confidence and high self-regard, beginning in childhood, to make the most of yourself and succeed in life. But, as I read somewhere, plenty of criminals think very well of themselves.

Today, it’s “grit,” which seems to be defined as perseverance and passion, and people are saying you have to have grit to get anywhere in life.

This makes sense to me. A book that came out in the 80s that punched a hole in the self-esteem movement before it even got started. The book was all about a long-term study of 120 high achievers in music, art, science, and sports, looking into exactly what it was that helped these people reach the heights of their fields.

The key turned out not to be self-esteem at all. What made the difference was, essentially, work ethic. The high achievers had parents who taught them to hold high standards for everything they did, and to maintain a sense of commitment to what they had chosen.

It even turned out that talent didn’t have as much to do with success as you would think. Essentially, the research said, working at something matters much more than anything else, including talent. 

It matters so much more that, in effect, practically anyone can get good at anything they choose, as long as they keep at it long enough. 

Which is an amazing thought. What do you want to be?

So grit definitely has its place, a very pivotal one.

But as a gardener, I know better than to think that any one thing, like self-esteem or grit, will ensure success and flourishing.

Even plants need at least seventeen different elements in order to live. To thrive, they need sun – lots of it – and water – lots of it. They need companion plants that make their lives easier, and they need a whole population of soil microbes, worms, and bugs. They need the right temperatures, and they need shelter from storms. They need all of this in as much abundance as possible.

When a plant doesn’t get just one of its essential nutrients, its growth can stall or it can fail to flower or fruit. It can be almost miraculous to watch how the plant responds when it finally gets what it needs – suddenly there’s a spurt of growth, or the plant starts to make flowers or fruit that it couldn’t before, fulfilling the potential that had been impossible until then.

I saw a “comprehensive list” of human needs that had thirty items on it, from rest and relaxation to touch, affection, laughter, and love.

I can tell you, I need a lot more than that – I also need fresh sheets on the bed every three days, and silence before ten in the morning, for starters.

The point is, we humans are complex creatures with complex needs, some of which are universal and some of which vary from person to person. You are probably the only person in the world who knows what you really need.

Just imagine what will happen when you finally get it.