Someone else tends my garden — why do I feel nothing for it?

You walk past the flower beds every day. Someone else planted them, waters them, pulls the weeds. You never touch the soil. The green space is lovely, and it belongs to your hands and heart in no way at all. I once paid a boy to feed my donkey so I would not have to smell the barn. Within a month the donkey no longer knew my voice. I complained to my neighbor that my donkey had grown cold toward me. He asked, 'Hodja, when did you last put your hand on its neck?' I had only excuses about my busy schedule. This is not really about gardens. It is about paying someone else to do the touching. You can own the view and still be a stranger to what grows there. Relationship needs skin on soil, not property rights — and it works better done with others than alone where no one sees.