Hannah Jackson: Yelling at the Ground

I reached my philosophical peak as a three-year-old digging in the dirt. I grew up in the woods of Connecticut with a sprawling garden taking up half of our backyard. The wooden planks that contained the raised beds to their spots in the spring and summer became parts of an invisible obstacle course under the winter snow. My mom used to look out the window to watch me and my brother running across the white expanse only for one or both of us to suddenly drop out of view when our toe hit wood. It became a favorite hazing ritual for uninitiated friends who managed to make the trek out to visit when there was a thick enough blanket of snow on the ground. But my favorite part of these raised beds were the potatoes it produced. Each summer we would have my cousins from out of state come stay with us for a bit and play our favorite game: rock or potato. We would sort the two into wheelbarrows and either bag them up or add them to the firepit as was appropriate.

But long before any rocks or potatoes could be wrested from the soil, they had to be placed there. I would stand behind my dad watching as he dug up rows of little holes and holding my own spade to appear helpful. When I was three, I began helping him and soon discovered the horrifying ritualistic worm sacrifice that was required to get my beloved spuds. I looked at my dad, equal parts angry and confused, and asked why we had to hurt the worms. He responded that it was all just part of the process.

“Well,” I shot back, “it’s a bad part.”

This could be cited as the earliest instance of me formulating a successful argument as it moved him to try and find a way to minimize the damage. Whether this was a response to my flawless reasoning or simply a way to avoid a toddler meltdown is unclear, but I choose to believe it was the former. My dad settled on jiggling the handle of his shovel and explained that the vibration would help scare the worms away. I nodded, determination set on my face, and then flung myself into the dirt and began humming. My parents tell this story and laugh at how quickly I connected vibration to humming but I’ve always been more inspired by the speed with which I hit the ground. I am sure I was wearing one of the many puffy-sleeved dress and patent-leather shoe combination outfits I insisted on wearing everyday no matter the occasion and yet nothing could keep me from going face-first into a layer of soil. All to save some worms.

College offers plenty of opportunities to find yourself on the ground and yelling into the dirt whether it’s about a paper that refuses to write itself or a quiz that didn’t go as hoped. But nothing has been able to recreate the same immediate jump into action as that one moment of concern for worm welfare. There was something about the total lack of concern for any consequences or norms that I have come to envy at this stage in life. I don’t think my vision has ever been so pure or my core philosophy so unshakeable as it was in that moment. I am reminded of the Pablo Picasso quote about how he spent his life learning to draw like a child and have to wonder if it might just apply to philosophy as well.