So at around 10:10 am every weekday morning, the caretakers at a nearby nursery school pull a wagon stuffed full of adorable toddlers past my kitchen window on the way to the park playground. There are 4 toddlers on each side of the red wagon, facing each other and holding on to a yellow grip bar like they’re on the world’s smallest hayride. Most days, since it’s been cold out until this week, they’re also bundled to their eyeballs in hats and snowsuits—Germans take children’s warmth very seriously. And their caretakers always look like they find the spectacle just as ridiculously adorable as I do.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how and why people relate to other people—prompted I suppose by the war in Ukraine, also the upcoming third anniversary of my husband discarding me. Also Will Smith slapping Chris Rock last night at the Oscars…. The first conclusion I’ve come to is that even under the best of circumstances, relating to other people is risky. You never know when someone is going to hurt you, either accidentally or on purpose, while trying to get something they want or simply just by not seeing you standing there. It occurred to me that statistically speaking other people are WAY more dangerous than Grizzlies, and I’m terrified of Grizzlies….
So, if people are dangerous, why interact with them? Especially now that we really don’t have to—with all of the remote and automated services that have come online during the pandemic. Trust me, I’ve taken full advantage of those things in Berlin, not only while I had COVID, but also on the days when I have run plumb out of German juice and just cannot face one more awkward interaction with one more person.
To be blunt, I think the answer is that the majority of us interact with the majority of other people in our lives because they’re of use to us. We want something from them—whether it’s affirmation or validation or a pizza or sex or entertainment or just someone to listen to us talk. Even in our intimate relationships, I think this principle of utility holds. Sure, we can say we love someone not for what they do for us, but just for who they are as a person, but I think a good chunk of the time, that’s a lie. We expose it as a lie every time the other person needs (not wants) something that we don’t feel like giving—and we don’t give it. Even when we do give more than we want to or than we get in a relationship, I think the odds are really good we’re trading in those time/energy/money tokens for a different currency we value more: namely, a feeling of superiority, or moral goodness, or simply the existential validation of someone on this planet seeing and needing us.
So, to flip the question back around: is being seen and loved just for who we are—and not what we can do for someone—really impossible? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s rare, but not impossible. I think to love another person purely for who they are, to seek their benefit regardless of what they do for us, we need at least one if not both of the following things:
- A source of worth, validation, and security that is entirely independent of other humans—like God, or a really radical form of self-acceptance;
- An ability to derive pleasure sheerly from another human being’s flourishing, like a gardener derives pleasure from seeing her garden flourish.
To be honest, I don’t think #2 provides enough motivation on its own because most people are far more complicated, exhausting, dangerous, and disappointing than most flowers. Maybe not Poison Oak Bonsai. Maybe that’s a good comparison. But anyhoo, with #2: People Gardening, we’ve at least moved away from utility and into the realm of aesthetics.
Which brings us back to the kinderwagen. Sure, those caretakers are getting paid to take care of those kids, but not to delight in them. I’m sure they occasionally feel appreciated by their charges, but I’ve met a few toddlers in my time, and I’ll put as much money as you like on the fact that there are at least as many times during the day when their caretakers don’t feel appreciated, that their care goes unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unreciprocated. That’s People Gardening for you.
More women maneuver themselves or get maneuvered into People Gardener positions for a number of structural reasons: Angela Merkel springs immediately to mind, perhaps because I’m in Germany at the moment. But of course you don’t have to be a woman to be a People Gardener. You just have to believe people are beautiful. And, I suspect you also have to be tapped into a well of validation that runs a lot deeper than other humans and what they can provide you in return.
The Rookery 