Let your feckless fly

Also: 20 years of same-sex marriage [Donate ❤️]( [View in Browser](  May 19, 2024 Dear Cog reader, This week, I’ve been thinking about why we continue to do things we’re bad at. I don’t spend much time on these activities – I am too self-conscious, undoubtedly the topic of another essay – but there are a few. Downhill skiing (stick to blue squares, take in the mountain scenery). Reading poetry (the language is soothing, but the imagery goes way over my head). And swimming (I am not fast, but I love being in the water). I suppose gardening is one of these things for me as well, though I hardly qualify as a gardener. Aspiring gardener, maybe. Sometimes, in March, when I can’t take another moment of winter, I wander around my local greenhouse, just to take in the color and the smells. I also have a collection of succulents from Trader Joe’s on my kitchen counter, and a few houseplants I haven’t killed (though my mother resuscitates them every time she comes to visit). Outside, I have a few pots of herbs and flowers, some very large hostas and a plan to install some phlox and tall grasses around my mailbox. Last spring, I pruned my hydrangeas, only to learn that this is the exact wrong thing to do – we had no flowers all summer long – so I won’t be making that mistake again. One day, I hope to plant a field of wildflowers on a muddy, rocky slope in my backyard, a la [Miss Rumphius](. Oh, “to make the world more beautiful.” I have hostas and hydrangeas on the mind because the novelist Anita Diamant wrote a very funny piece for us this week about her trials and tribulations in the garden. Anita’s commander-in-chief persona inside the house doesn’t stand a chance among the weeds. [Go read the essay](. It includes this gem, which is funny even out of context: “I fought the mulch and the mulch won.” (Anita is another of our guests on May 30 at CitySpace. [Tickets here]( Her description of one sweaty August afternoon wrestling a hosta the size of a Saint Bernard made me wonder why. Why go through the trouble? Why not hire a professional or give the lawn over to the clover? I think the answer to these questions is a lesson I’ve been trying to learn for a very long time. In my 20s, I worked for a woman business owner who took up gymnastics in her mid-40s. I thought she was a little nuts to be attempting such a thing — she had little hope of ever being good at it, and no time for it in her calendar — but her weekly gymnastics appointment made her happy. It wasn’t productive; it was silly and fun. And maybe that’s why I continue to do things I’m no good at, too? Or, let’s be honest, why I might be happier if I did more of them. There is freedom in being bad — in being able to proceed with zero expectations of ever really getting “good.” Unburdened by that pressure, I might do all sorts of things: knit, paint, surf, make pottery, play the banjo, cross-country ski (my cross-country skiing is even worse than my downhill form). Call it the joy of the journey or the blessing of a beginner’s mind. As Anita [would say]( “I’m letting my feckless fly.” With that in mind, go try something this weekend that you’re bad at – and let us know how it goes. We expect flops. We want flops. I’m going to see about my muddy hill of wildflowers. Until soon, Cloe Axelson Senior Editor, Cognoscenti [Follow]( P.S.— WBUR has a new newsletter called Mass. Politics. It’s basically a politics newsletter for people who wouldn’t normally sign up for a politics newsletter. Hear us out. 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