October 26, 2025
It’s well into the autumn season in the Midwest and while it’s historically brisk by this time of year, it’s still hotter than hell. This indicates a number of issues, climate change being one that seems to top most socially conscious people’s lists. One that arbitrarily ranks much further down the list is the fact that we’re nearing the end of October and I’m still mowing the damned lawn. I’ll be honest, I let it go for a couple of weeks, attributing my own negligence to the assumption that the grass has to eventually stop growing, a frost is sure to come or just that I have other things to do.
It’s a Jungle Out There
Upon pulling into the driveway one afternoon, however, I glanced about the one-acre lot our house sat upon and felt a feeling that was a little bit like disgust, sprinkled with a dash of shame. The grass was getting so long that I legitimately considered staking a sign in the middle of it which would have read something like “Sensitive Natural Habitat: Do Not Mow”.
The problem with this is that we live in a somewhat scattered rural neighborhood where many yards are maintained immaculately and with pride; while a few may showcase the stereotypical busted washing machine, a sprawl of vehicles that don’t run or just a massive hole in the front lawn for burning the copious amounts of trash that accumulate within any given residence for any number of reasons. It’s worth noting that there is no functioning HOA and our neighbor directly north of us has not mowed their lawn in the two years we’ve lived there, so posting a natural habitat sign in the middle of ours would’ve just been silly.
It’s a very large neighborhood with modest sized, mid-century houses and it’s a great shaded loop for running, biking and walking; and in cruising around, it didn’t take long to notice some random properties with giant metal shipping containers plopped down as on-site personal storage units (we know this because the containers themselves have yet to be shipped anywhere in two years).
While it’s nice to consolidate their belongings, it’s not only jarringly out of place, but also hardly welcoming. Any potential novelty or mysterious element is instantly negated by the fact that we all know there’s just a bunch of stuff in there that they can’t let go of. There could be bodies inside of them, but my vivid and grotesque imagination leaves little to be desired, as it’s still an obtuse metal fucking box approximately half the size of the house it sits in front of. Also, how and to where will it ever be moved?
In the days before I set out to finally mow, I would complain: “Look at our dang yard. We’re competing with Lady MacMeth next door to see who gives less of a shit.” My beautiful 9-year old son, always trying to cheer everyone up, said “It’s okay Dad, it doesn’t look anything like their yard. There’s actually a lot of yards out here that look worse than ours,” as he surveyed the various landscaping ‘styles’.
I love him so much and his heart was in it; but I wasn’t biting. When parenting our children, my partner and I don’t just hold them to high standards of respect and decency, we’re also Minimalists– in this case, “less is more” means less tall grass, more inner peace. It falls right in line with cleaning our rooms, picking up after ourselves and trying not to use curse words, ehem.
Don’t Look Down
“It could be worse,” is a phrase we hear all the time, as if knowing that our head could just fall right off would alleviate any dissatisfaction about an undesirable and “better” circumstance we’re currently in. I am all about gratitude and accepting things for what they are, but this line of thinking can be dangerous, for it spares no one from an underwhelming life of monotony and complacency, at best. I understand its purpose is to invoke perspective, but it often causes us to be looking downward while this very viewpoint may show us that, “ it could be better” too.
How far down are we willing to be just above ‘worse’? By my calculations, it could always be worse, until death (yet, even the uncertainty of afterlife has some of us squirming with anxiety). So, to what level are we willing to sink in order to make ourselves feel important? The food certainly didn’t taste any better when our mother told us, “Eat your dinner! There are starving children in Africa you know”.
If we’re looking way past our neighbor’s yard and into areas of the globe where genocide is being committed, how does that truly make us feel about basking in the freedoms we are afforded within our own borders? Is that low enough to still be comfortable? Both the absurdity and the wild truth behind these questions should certainly invoke a great deal of perspective, particularly having to do with compassion and with the frightful trajectory of our own nation’s collective moral decency.
There will always be people who are dumber, fatter, slower, less motivated, poorer and more dishonest than us, if we choose to be so cynical. To highlight anyone’s place beneath us in order to establish some twisted, contrived sense of hierarchical positioning is not only punitive to humankind, it also has us pointing in the wrong direction; because the further down the ladder we are descending to remain content, the more rungs we see when we look up.
If we subscribe to this Social Comparison Theory, the lower we stoop to feel smart or healthy or successful, then the more people there are who will appear “better” than us– this can slowly chip away at the wellness of our personal psyche. We all know it’s not really a competition and we don’t often consider how much we compare ourselves to others, in both directions; and while this does not traditionally function well as motivation for self-improvement (because it is inherently a superficial act) we manage to do it constantly.
Learning to Fly
We all know that things could be worse; we also know that things could be better and while this sounds like the equivalent of the phrase “it is what it is”, is it? No matter how well we do at something, there will always be someone who does it better. This is often viewed as a bad thing, because people place way too much emphasis on winning and being “the best” as the goal (see Keeping Score); but successful people observe, emulate and learn from other successful people. Sure, there may be a healthy rivalry that eventually blossoms between the master and the student, but that cycle represents the type of competition which makes everyone a better person all around.
The higher everyone aims, the greater potential we have for helping one another and for being happy; yet we’re so quickly appalled, offended, ashamed or insecure about the people who achieve more or less than we do, that we seem helplessly discontent. This culture is rife with comparisons and competition, which blurs the lines between our actions and our intentions, while further complicating the process of learning.
I’m trying to teach my kids that instead of looking down on people, we should recognize when they may be in need and offer them assistance or grace; and instead of looking up at people, we should simply spend our time with those who inspire us to be closer to the kind of person we want to be; the kind of person that the kid version of us would understand and approve of.
“At least my lawn doesn’t look like that” seems harmless by itself; but imagine if that continued to carry over: “At least my wife isn’t the lady staggering around her rundown property in a ratty nightgown, with a Marlboro Red hanging out of her mouth and ‘looking for her purse’”. Something tells me my actual wife may be less than flattered at being brought in as a subject in this juxtaposition.
This type of game is rocky and it is rigged, so get off the playing field as quickly as possible. Plus, the lady roaming around her yard in a nightgown happens to be fluent in three languages and is a Candidate Chess Master, so it’s best not to play with fire- especially not the one she happens to be lighting her cigarette with. Just smile and wave.