Mower for Sale. Or Not.

The mower is for sale. My sense of self-worth is not. Neither should yours. Here's how it's all connected. Let's see if I can wire this right.

It must have been 2004. I had just planted the first apple trees in the back. I needed a tractor to mow everywhere, but couldn't afford one. I bought this thing online, a commercial walk behind, to do the job. It came on a truck all disassembled. I put it together and got it started. Eventually I figured out how to keep it running, draining the gasoline every time I was done with a mowing job because the newer gasoline gums up the carbs on it. I learned how to change a flat tire by wrapping a cord tight against the rim and pumping air so the seal clamps shut. Little tricks that no manual will tell you about. I'm not saying I know everything about this mower, but I know a lot. Enough so that parting is a difficult call to make. But there comes a time when the money outlay for, in this case, a rethread job on the spark plug socket,  seems to outweigh the price of a newer machine. I could keep it going for a few more years, but the time seems right to say goodbye. It's not easy though.

A cold hunk of metal that's outlived its usefulness.

Or does this machine, by virtue of the time I've spent overhauling its innards and revving it into a semblance of life, motion, purpose, utility, does it exist in some kind of relationship with me that grants it an autonomous existence beyond its mere utility? You see where I'm going with this now, don't you?

Relationship. It's what grants life the sweetness that makes bearable the pain and sourness threaded through all matter. Okay, you know that. But does relationship extend to the things we've made with our own hands? I believe that it does, and that the prevailing junk in-junk out ethos of ours denies the possibility of such relationship even between men and women. It's responsible for a lot of the problems that we see around us, from the opioid epidemic to the ravages of a warming planet on our weather patterns.

How many times have you heard the phrase  "nobody cares?" It's the mantra of our time. We say it to insulate ourselves from the cold, like a blanket of tough fiber wrapped around our hearts. Yes, it's true. Nobody cares. Why should a body? It's not smart, in a world of looking out for number one, to care. And it's not the way we've arranged the world. Our operating paradigm as a society is to maximize economic utility. Whether from the left or right, everyone accepts the notion of GDP and economic growth as the baseline measure of our society's success or failure. If that's the case, then it's obvious that the bottom line paradigm that rules our lives and even our relationships is economic utility. The problem is the lack of any common good in such a world, no friendship, no shared endeavor beyond making money. Family life exists as an island of sanity in a rapidly rising sea of toxicity. Everything is touched and stained by the stink of profit, even our sense of self. In this view, our President Trump is a perfect embodiment of the American way, and it becomes clear why millions of people voted for him. Everything must be sacrificed to the idol Mammon.

Standing up to all that, I pose the once proud commercial walk behind mower pictured above. It can be yours for $100, or a reasonable offer. It's still good for parts. Or you could throw in for a rethread job and keep it running for a few more years. It would be a heck of a meaningful thing to do.