Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Weeds in the Wheat

There's this idea of the weeds and the wheat, or the chaff and the grain, or the lambs and the goats. You've got good and bad mixed together. Part of you wants to pull out the bad stuff as early as possible. Watch out though, you can't remove one without risking destroying the other. So what do you do? You let them grow together and sort it out in the end.

I think this is a great picture of what it is to be human. We've got these good and bad bits mixed up inside us, but you can't just yank out the bad parts because you'll destroy essential and good parts of who you are. David Bazan has a lyric that really appeals to me: "God bless the weeds in the wheat." So you're a little fucked up, but you know what? God bless the bad parts, because you wouldn't be who you are without those flaws, and if I somehow removed those flaws I'd kill off a bunch of the good parts too.

Maybe you're manipulative, but without such a great intuition for what people need you'd be less empathetic. Perhaps you drive yourself crazy with your over thinking, but then you wouldn't be such a thoughtful interesting person. What if you're lazy, but if you were motivated your friends wouldn't like how inaccessible you were.

What are your weeds?