The Walled Garden

Once there was this jungle. It was kind of shady. Also, there were tigers in it. People sort of wandered around and picked fruit and berries and sometimes built treehouses and then swung vines between them. Everyone was having a pretty fun time swinging between the treehouses. Sometimes the vines would break or you would swing to a treehouse that wouldn’t end up being there anymore, but that was mostly ok, because there were a lot of treehouses. Some of them were pretty fancy, with bright flashy lights and spinning signs and sometimes just a lot of construction work that never seemed to end. Even though there were always new people showing up, it always seemed like there was enough room for everybody. Then, one day, this walled garden showed up. People who swung into there tended not to swing out again. I mean, they could leave, there was nothing nefarious there, but they did tend to stick around. There was so much fruit to eat in that walled garden. It was so sweet! But, you know, it didn’t seem very filling. And some of the fruit seemed sweet at first, but then led to some real digestive issues later. Yikes! Still, it seemed like kind of a “friend garden” because it seemed like your friends were already there already. Also, since they were just hanging out there people just kind of started to work in that garden. The work mostly involved moving fruit from one side of the garden to the other. Sometimes someone would try to build a sort of on-the-ground treehouse, but those never seemed to work out. For some reason. One day this monkey just started throwing shit into the garden. And then it seemed like a LOT of monkeys started throwing shit into the garden. People just sort of shrugged and kept on hanging out in the garden. The fruit didn’t taste nearly as good, because it had shit on it. Yuck! Then everyone realized, boy, we shouldn’t be blaming monkeys, it was really just someone in this garden dressed in a monkey suit! Some people had been swinging outside in the jungle (remember that?) this whole time. They were still having a pretty good time, hanging out in treehouses and stuff. Occasionally, they tried to let people in the garden know how fun it was.

Moral: Why work in someone else’s garden, when you can swing through the trees with the greatest of ease?