Last spring, a friend gave me three hot pepper plants for my vegetable garden. I planted them with a mix of other vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, courgettes, salad, etc.
While all the plants grew and bore fruits, the hot pepper plants weren't producing anything. At the end of July, the plants were still relatively small, and there were only two small and green hot peppers. I am no expert in gardening, but I was definitely expecting something more. I thought that maybe I did something wrong, like planting them in the wrong moment or place. I was almost convinced to take them out and leave space for something else. However, I am lazy, and I had to go for a few weeks, so I left them there.
Can you imagine my surprise when I came back six weeks later and found dozens of beautiful red hot peppers ready to harvest?
Luckily, my laziness stopped me from getting rid of the plants only because they were not following my plans.
This event made me think of how often we try to apply our idea of order and productivity to nature. We want predictable results, but nature is unpredictable. Or at least, this is what we say because we can't fully understand its natural order.
So, we try to force our limited idea of predictability and order on nature, with destructive results.
I'd like to close this post with some wise words from Krishnamurti that I read the morning before I found my gorgeous red hot pepper.
We are trying politically, legally and socially to bring order in the outer world in which we are living, and inwardly we are confused, uncertain, anxious and in conflict. Without inward order there will always be danger to human life. What do we mean by order? In the supreme sense, the universe has known no disorder. Nature, however terrifying to man, is always in order. It becomes disordered only when human beings interfere with it. It is only man from the beginning of time who seems to be in constant struggle and conflict. The universe has its own movement of time. Only when man has ordered his life, will he realize the eternal order. Why has humanity accepted and tolerated disorder? Why does whatever man touches decay, become corrupt and confused? Why has mankind turned away from the order of nature, the clouds, the winds, the animals and the rivers? We must learn what disorder is and what order is. Disorder is essentially conflict, self-contradiction and division between becoming and being. Order is a state in which disorder has never existed. Disorder is bondage to time. —Krishnamurti