Democracy. It’s rather like a garden, if you think about it. In the spring, maybe late March, early April, you plant the seeds for a variety of flowers. You tend them carefully and with love, watering every morning, pulling the weeds that sprout up, day after day. Sprinkling some red pepper flakes each morning after the watering, to keep the squirrels and bunnies from digging up the seeds. You have a “No Spray Zone” sign posted to make sure the mowers don’t accidentally murder your poor little flowers before they see the light of day.
Then one day … SPROUTS!!! YAY … all that hard work is paying off! You’ve got sprouts, and a couple of weeks later, buds! Summer is setting in now … it’s hot and humid, so some days maybe you ‘forget’ to go out and water the flowers, but still … they thrive. The buds are opening … the sunflowers are almost as tall as you are and are simply beautiful, as are the others. All that gorgeous colour … you see it through the window every morning when you first open the blinds, and it brings joy to your heart.

But then one morning you notice the flowers aren’t looking too healthy. Oops … perhaps you have been a bit lax in the watering routine since the heat and humidity have kicked in, so you fill up the watering can and go out and give them a nice dose of water. And the next day you do the same. For several days, you water religiously and they begin to perk back up. Whew … it’s so hot … I promise I’ll water tomorrow, but I just can’t go out there this morning …
As Scarlett O’Hara said in the movie Gone with the Wind, “I won’t think about that today, I’ll worry about it tomorrow.” But tomorrow you have that early morning dental appointment and by the time you get home, you’re exhausted and the flowers … well, they’re maybe the last thing on your mind. Life goes on, things to do, places to go, people to see … when was the last time you watered those flowers? Oh, why doesn’t it just rain? And you water some days, but not others. The flowers have no way of escaping the heat and they are dying, but it takes a while before you notice. Once you do, you once again try to remember to water every morning, but it’s no longer a habit, no longer part of your morning routine, and you forget at least as often as you remember. And soon, the flowers are on the brink … of death.

So, too, is the case with democracy. It is fragile, like the flowers. Our ancestors worked hard to plant the seeds, others worked hard to grow those seeds into something beautiful … but sooner or later, we let our guard down. We forget that it is something that requires constant attention, something that can die if we don’t take proper care of it. We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day lives that we ignore the warning signs, the ‘wilted blossom’ here and there, a ‘man’ saying that he will “be the retribution” or that “immigrants are poisoning our blood”. We’ll “worry about it tomorrow” we say. And then … it’s tomorrow. And that same ‘man’ is saying that after this election, we’ll never have to worry about voting again. WHAT??? Wait … how did we get here? How did the flowers die?

Out in the garden, there is naught left but a few wilted stalks and stems. It is too late in the season to plant more. The garden is, in effect, dead.

The idea for this post came to me as I was folding a load of towels around 2:00 a.m. There is still time, my friends, to save the flowers, to save the democratic foundation upon which this nation was built, but it requires us … ALL OF US … to get out there and “water the flowers”.
Source: The Garden of Democracy | Filosofa’s Word
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