Yesterday, in beautiful Spring sunshine, I worked in my front gardem, planting flowers. Many people passed by and admired the flowers, but one woman stood there, simply gazing at me in disbelief. She came, I guessed, from Burma.
“You are doing your own gardening,” she observed.
“Yes”, I replied,” I always do my own gardening”
“Always?”
“Yes, always”
“Why?”
“I come from England. Most people in England love gardening”.
“Why don’t you hire someone to do it for you?”
“Because it gives me pleasure and a sense of achievment. It’s also good exercise”.
She looked up at the house. “Do you clean your own house as well?”
“No. I am a follower of Epicurus the philosopher. I do things that make for a pleasant life, and using a hoover is pleasant for about thirty seconds. As for dusting, Epicurus warned us against it”.
“Will you be doing this gardening when you get old?”
“Oh, probably when I am very old, say sixty, I might just do the front garden, instead of the one at the back as well”.
The woman stayed stock still, looking at me, shook her head, and, muttering, walked away.
Conclusion: each nationality has its exclusive pleasures. In Burma gardening is akin to slave labour. But then it doesn’t have the same beautiful Spring days. Or daffodils.
Did Epicurus really warn against dusting? If so, why?
Not really! I was teasing her. But I think it’s fair to say that the pursuit of dusting gives minimal pleasure, so it’s fair to assume he didn’t like it and didn’t do it. His mind was on higher things. At the time I had the conversation with the Burmese lady my mind was on a nice cup of tea, so perhaps I should have said a little less.
I’m in the middle of George Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier.” As a young man he served five years in the Imperial Police in Burma.
Your guess that the inquisitive lady was Burmese brought to mind Orwell’s observation on landscapes in that country: “The landscapes of Burma, which, when I was among them, so appalled me as to assume the qualities of nightmare, afterwards stayed so hauntingly in my mind that I was obliged to write a novel about them to get rid of them. (In all novels about the East the scenery is the real subject-matter.)
Orwell, George (1972-10-18). The Road to Wigan Pier (p. 40). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Four years later, I don’t know if you’re still in Burma, but I loved reading your post. I used to live there also, 25 years ago, and was so frustrated to be unable to look after my own garden myself. On one of my first sundays in the house, I started weeding a flowerbed, and suddenly, the gardener’s wife ( as expats, we had to have a gardener by contract) was squatting beside me and pulling up weeds… I understood she felt guilty, interpreting my doings as a reproach to her husband. I couldn’t explain myself: she spoke no english, I spoke no burmese, but I felt very disappointed. Now I’m living in the french countryside. I sometimes would like a helping hand with the garden, as I’m very old (say, sixty), but i’ve got this pleasure and sense of achievement you wrote of. And daffodils, too, which are just now flowering in the meadows outside my windows.
Wow! that goes back a while, but thank you for finding it and for commenting on it in such a nice way. Most charming.
No, I am living in the United States, with forays back to England, although I must say at the moment moving to France
is a tempting idea. Such a beautiful country – and my wife speaks fluent French. The world is in such a mess.
Even France is affected. But the idea of being in the French countryside is very attractive.