Here, once again, there is something slightly odd about Solomon’s scenario. For some reason, the girl he describes has been laboring long and hard in somebody else’s vineyard, working under their direction, for their benefit, despite the fact that she has a perfectly good vineyard of her own which she has simply neglected.

What Solomon is describing is a person with great but uncultivated potential, one who has been content to be employed in a quite menial capacity in the service of someone else, the common experience of most of mankind throughout the ages.

Psychological Soil
The vineyard represents the human mind, the plot of psychological soil God has given each one us to cultivate and make productive for the comon good – and the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently had a similar metaphor in mind when he said: "There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that the must take himself for better for worse as his portion . . . no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till”.

Self Image
Each section of the “Song” affords a variety of complementary insights, only a very few of which I have drawn out. We see, for example, that the girl asks others not to stare or look down on her because her skin is very dark, scorched by the sun from long hours laboring in the vineyard -- and, perhaps illustrating the fact that so many people in this warped world actually look down on themselves, possessing a "negative self image" that saps the courage they need to take charge of their lives and begin cultivating their neglected potential..

The Addled Inventor
Genius inventor Thomas Edision once described how as a child he was even looked down on and discouraged by his teachers, saying in his autobiography: "I remember I used never to be able to get along at school. I don’t know now what it was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that the teachers never sympathized with me and that my father thought I was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a dunce . . . One day I heard the teacher tell the inspector that I was ‘addled’ and it would not be worth keeping me at school and longer. I was so hurt by this last straw that I burst our crying and went home and told my mother about it".

Beware of Bullies
Many people fail to pursue their dreams because they are afraid of what other people will think of them – and the girl in the "Song" has, up to this point of enlightenment, also been afraid, meekly succumbing to the anger and emotional pressure of her bullying brothers, letting them control her life, still the common experience of many women in some societies even today.
In “Mindstore”, Scottish personal development guru Jack Black points out the sad fact that many people he tries to help to improve their lives are defeated right off by a fear of what their friends will think of their newly found enthusiasm and ambition.

The Success Habit
But what about you? What are you doing with your life, time and talents and opportunities? What are you neglecting -- and how could you make a more useful contribution to society? What do you want to achieve, and where can you begin? As Anthony Robbins points out in "Giant Steps", it is the habit of continually asking and obtaining the answers to questions like these that sets successful people apart from the crowd.

Find a Focus and Specialize
Perhaps Solomon chooses a vineyard as a metaphor for the mind, rather than a field or garden, because it is a plot of land dedicated to a single commercial purpose, namely the production of grapes for wine making. Creative excellence, likewise, requires a focused, constructive, specialized and substantial purpose to pursue.

Prune Back the Overgrowth
A grape vine normally lives for some ten to twenty years, and grows by putting out lateral runners from the main, vertical stem or trunk. If the vine is neglected, it will put out laterals in all directions, and the result will be a tangled web of unproductive runners, and a profusion of foliage and overgrowth.