The Garden I Kept Trimming

The trouble with building a good image of yourself is that you eventually have to live inside it.

John Philip Falter, Sunday Gardening (“Tidy and Sloppy Neighbors”), 1961. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, July 1, 1961. Image source: The Saturday Evening Post.

I did not understand this until I began looking closely at John Philip Falter’s Sunday Gardening. In the painting, two neighbouring gardens meet along a hedge.

One is carefully maintained. The lawn is cut, the edges are neat, and a man is still working to keep everything in place. Next door, objects have been left outside and the plants have grown beyond their intended boundaries. It is not a garden prepared for inspection.

At first, the contrast seems simple. One neighbour takes care of his home. The other does not.

But the longer I look at the painting, the less certain I become.

The tidy garden may be peaceful. It may also require constant attention. The other garden may have been neglected, or it may simply be a place where ordinary life has interrupted the work of keeping things presentable.

I cannot decide which side is better. That is probably why the painting stayed with me.

For much of my life, I tried to keep myself on the tidy side.

I wanted my work to appear considered and my decisions to make sense. I kept unfinished things private. Before taking a risk, I examined it from every angle, not only because I wanted to do well, but because I did not want anyone to see me getting it wrong.

Perfection felt useful then. It gave me rules.

Prepare properly. Avoid obvious mistakes. Do not show anything until it is ready.

I thought that if I appeared capable for long enough, I would eventually feel capable too. Instead, I became increasingly occupied with protecting the appearance.

I noticed this most clearly during a period of unemployment.

Job seeking developed a rhythm I came to dread. I would find an opportunity and feel hopeful. I would send the application, wait, and begin imagining how my life might change if it worked.

Then the rejection arrived.

At first, I could understand it as one company choosing someone else. After enough rejections, that distinction became harder to maintain. The application was rejected, then my work seemed rejected, and eventually I felt rejected as a person.

There were practical reasons for the pressure. I could not support myself in the way I wanted. My parents were worried about my future, and I was worried too. I had studied and worked for years, yet I could not point to an outcome that proved I was moving forward.

Each application began to carry more than it reasonably could.

I did not only want employment. I wanted confirmation that I had not wasted my time. I wanted evidence that I was still capable and that my life had not quietly gone wrong.

I kept trying other things, but effort without a visible result is difficult to explain. People see whether something worked. They rarely see the abandoned drafts, the hours spent learning, or the attempts that led nowhere.

For a while, I resented this. I believed people only cared about effort once it became success.

Then I noticed that I often looked at others in much the same way.

When someone failed publicly, said something embarrassing, or produced work that was not very good, I sometimes treated that moment as evidence of who they were. I may not have said anything aloud, but the judgment was still there.

I had helped build the world I was afraid of.

I had spent years worrying that other people would reduce me to my mistakes. At the same time, I had been reducing them to theirs.

If I believed another person’s failure exposed something shameful about them, then of course I would expect my own failure to expose me too. Every private judgment became another rule I would later apply to myself.

People do judge. Some families, workplaces and cultures leave very little room for mistakes. I do not believe that all fear comes from within.

But I had made that fear stronger by agreeing with it.

The result was not better work. Often, it was less work.

I delayed starting because I wanted to choose the correct direction. I prepared too much for small decisions and imagined how I might defend myself if something went badly. Even while trying, part of me was already preparing to hide the result.

I spent so much time trying not to look lost that I stopped noticing where I actually was.

Whenever something failed, I tried to make it appear less serious. I explained too much. I covered uncertainty with planning and wrapped disappointment in language that made it sound intentional.

I was still maintaining the garden, even when I was too tired to enjoy it.

There is nothing wrong with care. I still want to do good work. I do not believe mistakes should always be celebrated or dismissed as part of growth. Some mistakes hurt people. Others come from carelessness or poor judgment. They may require an apology or an honest correction.

The problem was that I could not allow a mistake to remain limited to what had happened.

It quickly became a statement about me.

I had built an identity around being capable and in control. When life contradicted that identity, I could either admit that my picture of myself was incomplete or hide the evidence.

Most of the time, I hid it.

This was how perfection became a trap. It began as a way of protecting myself from criticism, but eventually I had to protect it. The image could not admit confusion. It could not change direction without looking inconsistent. It could not fail at something ordinary without treating the failure as a personal crisis.

I once believed that accepting myself would make me passive. Self-criticism seemed more responsible because it felt as though I was doing something.

In reality, criticism often made me defensive. I became so concerned with proving that I was not failing that I could not look clearly at what had gone wrong.

Acceptance is less impressive than I used to imagine.

It does not mean approving of everything I do. It means allowing an experience to remain the size that it is.

A rejected application is painful. It may reveal a weakness in my work or show that someone else was better suited to the role. But it does not have to explain my entire life.

A mistake can require correction without becoming an identity.

Acceptance allows change, while a fixed image demands constant maintenance.

When I no longer spend all my energy protecting the image, I have some energy left to look honestly at what happened. I can correct something without treating the correction as evidence that I am defective.

I am also trying to extend that space to other people.

Someone’s failure may tell me something about their decision, preparation or behaviour. It does not necessarily tell me everything about their character. I still catch myself making quick judgments, but I am beginning to question what those judgments will later teach me about myself.

This brings me back to a question I have spent years trying to answer:

Who am I?

I used to approach it as though there must be a correct response. I wanted a definition I could live up to and defend. Once I had decided what kind of person I was, I tried to remove anything that did not fit.

But life keeps producing contradictions.

I can be capable in one situation and uncertain in another. I can work hard and still fail. I can understand the harm of judgment and continue judging people anyway.

I do not have a cleaner answer now.

I still hesitate when I cannot predict the outcome. I still hide things when I am embarrassed. I still want the garden to look presentable before anyone sees it.

But sometimes I leave something unfinished. Sometimes I send the application before every sentence feels safe. Sometimes I notice the judgment forming and choose not to trust it immediately.

The garden has not become wild.

I am only learning that not every branch needs cutting.

Who am I?

I do not know.

For now, I am trying to leave the answer alone long enough for life to change it.