Does Not Want

Earlier this spring, I decided to tame my strawberry patch. Not only had the strawberries begun to leap from their metal raised beds and into pathways, lawn, and adjacent plant beds, they were also at the point of choking themselves out.

Strawberries are an easy starter plant because they send off runners, which means the plants multiply quickly. They’re also allelopathic, which means they secrete self-made herbicide to destroy competitor plants. Unfortunately, strawberries can poison themselves with this herbicide. You have to either rotate your strawberries every three-ish years to move them away from the toxic soil, or you can interplant the bed with certain companion plants that mitigate the toxicity.

I’ve rotated them previously, and now I’m trying companion planting. First, I needed to thin the bed to make space for leeks, parsley, lettuce, and beans. I’m a softie who has a hard time pulling out thriving plants and tossing them into the compost. Don’t even get me started on the heartbreak I experience when I need to thin the carrots…

I posted on social media for folks to come pick up strawberry plants for free from my driveway. Within a few hours, I had dozens of requests. Since my priority was thinning the bed, I worked in my backyard garden, placing the strawberry plants in groups of 30 or so in old nursery buckets. Each person could grab a bucket, which was more than enough for a home garden—nurseries typically sold strawberries in six-packs!

I had about ten buckets sitting at the base of my driveway for folks to take without my involvement when I discovered one person had taken all of them. That’s right, about 300 strawberry plants.

What was a normal person on a Saturday afternoon going to do with 300 strawberry plants?! Did they have a commercial farm with rows pre-dug for all of those plants? Did they have the rest of the weekend cleared to solely plant strawberries?

The most plausible reality is that most of the strawberry plants were left to die by whoever took them. And, this was hugely disappointing to me because I had purposely been trying to avoid letting these healthy plants die.

Back when I was allowed to work a customer service counter job at a retail store, we’d have to select a reason why someone was returning an item, which caused the return ticket to direct the item to resell or return to warehouse for repacking or disposal. My favorite among the options was, “Does Not Want.”

Recently, I’ve been trying to apply “Does Not Want” to more aspects of my life.

In our fervently capitalistic society, we’re trained to “get the best deal.” If you can buy in bulk to save two cents per item, you do it. If you’re offered something for free, you take it. Even if you don’t want these extra or free items.

Undoubtedly, the person who rolled up to my driveway and took 300 strawberry plants thought more free stuff was better without contemplating if they needed or even wanted that many. There are many things I do want, such as more books for my “to-be-read” stack. But I’m trying to be mindful of things I do not want.

I received a free pair of tickets to a concert next weekend, but I strongly prefer my quiet garden and books. Do I want to attend the concert, or did I just get the tickets because they’re free and now I’m going to force myself to spend an evening doing something I don’t really enjoy? Definitely the latter, which makes these tickets “Does Not Want” and I should give them to someone who loves live music.

I still have about 20 tomato plants that I don’t have space for in my garden. And realistically, if I jammed these tomatoes someplace, I’d just grow a bajillion times more tomatoes than I’d be able to consume before next summer. Historically, I’d hold onto them because they have value. But now? Every neighbor and friend is offered free tomato plants until they’ve been rehomed where they will be appreciated.

There’s a certain power in choice, and that’s generally thought of as choosing what to do. But when we’re flooded with “free!” and “bulk buy!” and “buy one get one!” I think we might have more power in what we don’t choose.

An extremely well-known celebrity has a reputation for changing identities to match their romantic partner. How can a person who has plenty of money, opportunity, and connections not have a strong identity of his or her own?

When you can have anything you want, you don’t need to pick and choose. You can say yes to everything. But what you say no to helps define who you are. Every time you forgo something, you’re saying, “That’s not right for who I am.” Anyone can ride a roller coaster, but if you say, “No thanks, that’s not for me,” you’re making a statement of identity.

Strawberry plants and their self-suffocation show us how more is often not better. Don’t automatically take everything and anything available to you. “Does Not Want” is a perfectly acceptable option.