"A Day in the Garden"

 

What makes a garden?

A garden is a place where flowers and plants of various types are refined and cultivated. It is an area where botanical life is relished and nurtured carefully. It is also a place where an atmosphere of tranquillity comes into view. Thus, like all things in the physical world—man-made or not, it becomes a venue for discernment or leisure. This is the reason why the phrase “a walk through the woods and garden” is associated to those who are contemplating, breaking themselves away from a wearisome life. Even Jesus visits Gethsemane— a greenery outside Jerusalem, countless of times.  He does so very often since it is, in all odds, the only location in the city where silence looms. In fact, pointing to biblical account, Jesus spends the remaining hours of his life looking for inner comfort in the garden.  Thus, to some—as it is to Jesus—a garden is a sanctuary.

To a selected few, a garden is a creation of art— a piece of work where attention to details and creativity are put into notice. The hanging garden of Babylon, for example, exhibits such artistry. By historical description, the ones that grew around the cemented walls of the structure were vegetation and foliage of diverse terrains from all over the world. However, unlike any other ordinary garden, it thrived in the most forsaken site on earth—in a desert where everything else, like water and its environment, is scarce and hostile. It was no ordinary garden therefore because it flourished through time despite a direful condition. Hence, like any imaginative work, a garden is an artefact of one’s reflective ingenuity.

For Martin Heidegger, a garden is a product of dwelling. In his book Poetry, Language, Thought, he clearly states that everything in the world is a gift to which one is invited to respond with affection and devotion. Here, just like a gardener, each individual is called to nurture the world and the things in it with a sense of responsibility. To dwell profoundly, henceforth, is to garden —to lay out something on the ground with utmost care and attention.

So what does it mean to dwell? 

To begin with, to dwell is to let-be, to allow things to come into presence—to reveal itself. In this context, it is to be aware of one’s unique human condition— the irreplaceable circumstances that separate man from the rest; a kind of situation that makes him distinct amidst plurality. This includes situations or sequence of substantial and accidental features that constitute largely the condition of one’s life. Substantial structures include man’s physical parts that are not foreign, thus common to other bodies (number of limbs, eyes, nose, and etc.); or, the very nature of man himself—a rational being— that which separates him from other lower entities or created beings. While accidental structures include race, religion, physical attributes, the kind of family where one belongs, the societal status that one enjoys, the lists of unintended qualitative and/or quantitative components of man which include the color of one’s eyes, skin, hair and etc. 

The aforesaid things must be acknowledged. One should recognize the various features of life that define man. He is then encouraged to accept everything, to give importance to the kind of life where he is in. This process of personal awareness—which includes a careful assessment of life—allows him to discover his individuality. As a consequence, he learns to value himself. He identifies his right and responsibility. And it is in this framework, therefore, that existence becomes his own. 

Part of the existential challenge is to confront one’s inimitable situation and the certainty of a life pointed towards an end. This life's drama, which is customarily presented through an illustration (see diagram below), involves man’s existence in the horizon of time. To Heidegger, Dasein—in reference to man as a-being-there-in-the-world—is in a “thrown” existence, imposed and yet transitory. And it is in this “thrownness”, this “givenness,” that he is continually reminded of his “momentariness,” a passing existence—a tragedy. "As soon as man comes to life," Heidegger says, "he is at once old enough to die." Such grim reality offers no immunity to all and yet it calls for a remedy to something seemingly unfulfilling. On this ground, to appropriate Heidegger’s words, death and dying are valued and magnified in the level of authentic existence alone. This genuineness in living presupposes recognition of what is humbly “thrown” or given to each individual. Therefore, in all human condition, it is essential to admit the fact that death is not just a mere inactivity of the future. Differing from its definition as a complete annihilation or total destruction of the self, it is, in essence, a part of the wholeness of one’s being. That is, among all great things, a comprehensive recognition of death is imperative to a life that seeks for meaning. And isn’t this the kind of mind-set that one should not live without? For in this manner, death will lead one slowly to the very core of his existence—towards a complete awareness of what he is and what he can become. 

In adherence to Heidegger, Thomas Flynn believes that man—in response to this inexorable human circumstance— must learn how to “dwell poetically.” To dwell poetically here means to live romantically on what is certain. This passionate confrontation with death, however, does not instigate an irrational conformity to the unknown—simply surrendering to that which is inconceivable and inescapable, but rather it brings about an artistic dimension to it. This sort of representation is equated to imaginative living—a life lived gently and tenderly through gardening.

Figuratively, in a gardener’s perspective, each area to cultivate—a raw land which requires refinement—is his project. It is a given task that demands careful work over a long period of time. Similarly, such piece of land is what Heidegger means by “thrownness,”a situation that invites personal assessment and perceptivity. And when one understands this unique human state, when one acknowledges and responds to it, one begins to enrich one's existence, and then one beautifies it. Existence then becomes a transformative project. 

Eventually, in the course of improving the land, the gardener takes pride in taking care of his plants and flowers. He nurses them in the same way that man, in his vocation to provide meaning to existence, nurtures that which surrounds him. It is so because part of this process entails the growth of each being. In all likelihood, just as the gardener grows with his plants, so man—in his effort to nourish all other beings and the world where he lives in - also flourishes in every aspect of his life. 

In conclusion, to garden is: to put life into what is barren; to cultivate hope and meaning to what is empty, to create a sense of purpose, to beautify that which needs improvement, to be concerned with the world, to care for others, to make a lasting imprint in one’s existence, to accomplish something. And, finally, to dwell as if he who does not find reason for living has never visited a beautiful garden at all. 

Lot Tabilid,Jr. Chapter 8: "Mindfulness of Death," Thinking Human: A Comprehensive Worktext in Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person for Senior High School (USC Press, 2016), 95-108