Landscaping with Bush
Yesterday, my neighbor's landscaper spent about 3 hours edging, blowing and mowing my next-door neighbors yard to perfection. She must be paying him well, because it should have taken half that amount of time. I guess the guy wanted to do a great job. No harm in that right?
Well, he even went to the extreme of mowing a small strip of land on my side of the property line and edging one side of my driveway. Neither needed it as we just tended to our yard earlier this week, but he did it anyway. Should I have a problem with it? Well that's not it.
But he left all the clippings on my driveway! And while he was blowing, somehow managed to get a few hundred Magnolia leaves (large enough to use as steno paper) under my truck in the carport! I didn't notice most of this until he was already packing up to leave. What does one say?
He had no intention of cleaning it up! Really! I guess he thought he was doing us a favor by trimming up our yard, which was obviously unkempt by his standards, but freshly trimmed
I personally put my best foot forward in making sure my freedoms end where someone else's begins, a practice that I think works pretty well in most situations. Maybe this man's motives were genuine but the mess he left behind was nonetheless offensive.
ON a less superficial level, this is a nice example of what humans typically do with their environment.
With even the greatest of intentions, we drop stones render ripples and after hundreds of decisions are made and carried out, we look back toward the shore and wonder why it has receded beyond our view.
If you've made it this far and haven't thought about the title, well.
This entry was posted on May 3, 2006 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Social Ethics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
May 18, 2006 at 3:21 pm
LOL Forrest! Thats a good one. In a speach Humza Yusuf gave once when he came to memphis in May of 2005 he told us a similar story hinting at the same person. His went something like this:
He (Humza Yusuf) was trailing his bag from one terminal to the other at the memphis airport and without knowing he trailed it over an officers toes. The officer got very mad and started yelling (probably more so then usual cause Shaykh Humza was wearing robes, a traditional hat, and had a beard) claiming that Shaykh Humza had ment to do it. In his speach he went on to say that sometimes we look so hard at our goals and we want to get there so badly that we don’t see if we steped on anothers toes. …Somestimes we are so busy filling our bags with say *oil*…we don’t see the officer coming towards you sputtering!
Humans are selfish. In love, in hate, in anger, in sorrow…all the time. Thats so disgusting!
Later,
Shahin.