Weeds Against Humanity

Ben:

Our property spans a quarter acre at most, and, like most properties, the outside requires upkeep: the lawn mowed and edged, the weeds pulled, the gutters and downspouts cleaned out, and, if so desired, some flowers planted. Normally, this upkeep doesn’t require too much time or effort to accomplish. However, a couple years ago I went back to school to finish getting my degree. This meant that things like sleeping, eating properly, watching television, playing games, and especially lawn maintenance went to the wayside.

Two years have passed since I last took proper care of the outside of our home. Last week, finding some free time to try to catch things up, I found that work that used to take an afternoon to complete now took the better part of a week to accomplish. Half of our yard had been overgrown. The weeds and saplings normally pulled with little effort had now grown into small trees and stubborn patches of brush that had to be attacked with hoe and shovel. Some areas will even require professional help to clear out because I lack the tools and experience to do so.

As I surveyed our backyard, which I’ve mostly reclaimed now, the thought occurred to me that there are people very much like the weeds I struggled to remove. Controlling people, especially. Like weeds worming into an unsuspecting lawn, a controlling person will begin worming their way into a person’s life by offering small “favors” or giving modest “gifts” to their victims. Offered freely on the surface, these offerings are quickly followed with requests for the victim to reciprocate. The controller’s requests are harmless and easy to comply with at first but, as time goes on, the favors and gifts outstrip the receiver’s ability to respond in kind. For example, the controller will “loan” a large sum of money when the victim is in a bind that they have no way of paying back immediately. At that point, the controller has achieved their first goal.

The controller has now established an artificial sense of obligation in their victim. The controller then adds “suggestions” to the mix, weighing in on every area of their victim’s life -- what they should eat, what they should wear, and so on. The victim begins to feel the controller’s tightening grasp and experiences the conflict of their own free will clashing with the desires of the person holding the un-repayable debt over their head.

The more time passes, the more insurmountable the problem becomes for the victim. Like the runaway weeds and saplings that have overgrown a home, the controller has dominion over just about every part of the victim’s life, and the only way to get out from underneath it is to call in legal and psychological experts to help disentangle the whole mess.

I’ve used the word “victim” here, but in this scenario the victim is also to blame. Like the gardener who ignores the garden and lets it get taken over by all manner of undesirable flora and fauna, the victim didn’t take care of themselves properly either. Instead of saying “no” early when the stakes were low and it was easy to say, the victim went with the flow, avoiding conflict and pleasing the controller at every turn. They didn’t want to offend anyone or hurt anyone else’s feelings, but forgot that they themselves were people with rights, hopes, dreams, and physical and psychological needs. They forget they could say “no” and that they weren’t responsible for keeping other people happy.

There is a group of people who, sadly, have no say in the matter. They are the minors: the children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews of adults who play the “you owe me” card throughout their lives. They have no choice but to comply. The best we adults can do is to help where we can by encouraging, counseling, and reminding the indentured child-servants of controlling parents that they are, indeed, people and are allowed to say “no,” especially when someone wants something from them they have no right to ask for.

I was recently liberated from a pair of controllers who haunted my life for nearly two decades. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I’m all too happy to say “no” now.

Esther:

I’m not a hobbyist gardener mainly because I don’t like weeding. I try to avoid any task that seems to need more maintenance than its goal (like doing dishes -- if I had my way, we’d only eat off paper plates). So when I was young, I avoided anything that seemed to be too much work. Saying no to pushy people -- either over and over, or once and dealing with the nuclear fallout, whichever their personalities seemed geared toward -- seemed far more work than just giving them what they wanted.

Sure, I’ll wear this. Okay, I’ll apologize for that. Fine, I’ll agree to whatever you want to say is wrong with me.

But some people push just to be pushing. They push because they’ve gotten addicted to spreading past the boundaries of others. And once their species has invaded non-native territories, they seem almost impossible to root out.

We -- those of us who are more likely to be invaded than to try invading -- don’t want to believe this could be anyone’s motivation. They must push because they believe they’re right. Maybe they push because they were once hurt like they’re now hurting us, and if we could get them to see the truth, they’d stop pushing.

I spent so much time and effort on the motivations of these weeds before I realized their motivation for pushing doesn’t matter. Regardless of their reasons for invading me, my response to them should be the same: a gentle, firm push right back at them.

Over and over. As many times as I need to. Pulling out their weeds every single time I see them, as soon as I see them, because they simply don’t belong here.

It seems like a lot of work. But whenever I think it might be too much work, I just remember that not doing that work is saying no to my own right to be a person. And when I keep my person free of weeds, I have room in my life for all the other people who are just people, free and easy to interact with, who aren’t trying to invade me at all.