Cultivating My Garden
I've not been doing much (any) cultivating, but the theme gives me an excuse to post a photo I actually took myself. (My friend Sunshine inspires me to expose some of my own pictures to the light of cyberspace--more to come, I hope.) Cultivating one's own garden, that is, tending to one's own back yard, is the final recommendation of Voltaire's Candide, a work that has long held a fascination for me because when I had to pass a French language competency test in order to get my MA, I was unbelievably lucky to be given a passage from Candide to translate. I was unclear on the precise meaning of many of the words and phrases (all those idioms!), but upon recognizing the familiar story was able to present myself as smarter than I was. What has this to do with running? Thought you'd never ask. I confess I never was quite clear on the meaning of cultivating one's own garden. Did it mean you should lock out the world and ignore all its problems in favor of getting y...