My wife has a green thumb. No. I take that back. Her entire body is green. She can magically transform any space — like our balcony — into a haven of wondrous sights and smells.
I don’t know much about flowers. But I know she does. So I watched her care for them, and I took mental notes. Eventually, when I realized that I wasn’t likely to break anything, I joined in. Mostly, I just water the flowers and plants. I let her pluck off the dead flower heads, rid the plants of Japanese Beetles and aphids, and add food to the water from time to time.
My job is to give the flowers a drink.
If I do say so myself, I’ve gotten good at it. I can tell at a glance that the flowers are thirsty.
They look droopy.
Like in the picture, above.
I know what healthy, satisfied pansies look like. And the flowers in the picture ain’t it.
But I wouldn’t have known that unless I paid attention to the flowers, both when they’re vibrant and when they’re lacking something.
People are the same way.
Example: One Saturday, late afternoon, we were in a local grocery store (one of Michigan’s major chains of grocery/clothing/pharmacy/sporting goods/audio & video stores) buying our food for the upcoming week. As we approached an empty check-out lane, I noticed the cashier straightening the candy and gum rack. She was on her haunches moving little packages from one place to another. When she rose, I noticed a slight hitch to her step. I saw her yawn. She glanced back at us and walked to her post behind the cash register.
“Droopy,” I thought. “I wonder why?”
I watched her slide our items across the scanner, heard the computerized “Beep!” as each one was logged and tallied, and saw her stifle another yawn.
When I got up to the spot where customers stand by the credit-card machine, I asked her, “How’s your day going?”
I didn’t know what to expect. But I knew I had to “water” this droopy person.
To my surprise, she smiled. “It’s okay,” she replied. “How’s yours?”
I allowed that my evening was okay. Then I ask what I always do to help jump-start a conversation with cashiers and clerks: “So, what time do you get to go home?”
She glanced at her watch and told me a time two hours from that moment.
“That’s not too bad,” I said. “What time did you start?”
That opened the floodgates. Suddenly, she was at ease, talking about her day, why she was tired, and looking much more energized than she had been just four minutes prior. Turns out, she and her husband were moving from an apartment into a home. They had been hard at it for days. She was exhausted.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s quite a schedule you have going. When do you have to be out of your apartment?”
She told me that, technically, they were already behind schedule. She needed to get home to continue the move.
“You’re doing a great job,” I told her. “You work hard moving, then you come to work here. That’s amazing.”
Then I added, “Congratulations on buying a house.”
She beamed. Her “Beeping” of products over the scanner increased in pace and energy. She talked nonstop the rest of the time she rang up our items.
Droopy people are easy to spot. Granted, they may not look slightly shriveled like a thirsty pansy, or walk with their heads bent down like a dejected Charlie Brown (or the characters in the hilarious TV show Arrested Development who parodied the depressed Charlie Brown walk).
So their droopiness may not be strikingly obvious. But I practiced at it. I spent years watching people, right down to their slightest movements. When I’m out in public, especially at a restaurant or grocery store, I don’t bury my face in my smart phone. Or a magazine in the rack of Crappy Magazines. I watch people around me. And I always engage the cashier in conversation, which invariably includes, “What time do you get to leave today?” That question brightens the face of even the sourest personalities. Everybody wants to go home.
How does one cultivate the “green thumb” of caring for people?
Zen practitioners spend their lives perfecting being in the moment. Hours of meditation, huatou practice (asking “What is it?” repeatedly), or koan practice (answering Zen’s seemingly nonsensical story problems), help Zen Buddhists be aware of their surroundings — and open to responding genuinely to them. Zen is not about navel gazing; it’s about serving others with purity of mind genuineness of emotions. To achieve this, Zen practitioners “wake up” to their true nature.
Christians often pray to be of help to others, asking God to empower them to be His vessel. In so doing, they are aware of those around them, ready to respond to their needs.
There are many ways to earn a Ph.D. tending to the vast “people garden” (would the German word for that be volksgarten?). But I suggest that we can only show love to our communities when we can see when someone needs a bit of encouragement, a metaphorical drink of water when they’re droopy.