Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. | Og Mandino
You reap what you sow. And about a week ago or so, I was seriously considering sowing some rotten seeds just to be spiteful for rotten seeds being planted in a garden close to mine. But I’m thankful for quotes and principles like this that show up just in the nick of time to remind me why that’s not the correct way to go about anything.
Because, sticking with the garden analogy, it wouldn’t serve any of us to all have spoiled fruit, would it? Or no fruit at all?
Planting bad seeds and yielding nothing hurts me first, because I’ll obviously have nothing. Then it will hurt everyone I provide for – and with as much crap as I have going on in my life, we don’t need more crap. And I certainly don’t want to punish anyone else that eats from my garden.
And when the gardens around me, already sown with infection and rot come to be harvested and those I love come up empty, the hope is that the good that I’ve planted in my own garden, the healthy seeds I’ve tried carefully to bring to fruition will not only provide for everyone, but bring people previously divided to the same table to eat.
And hopefully, that is where the peace can be made and family can be forged.
Sorry if that’s incredibly vague. I don’t want to put anyone or any specific situation on blast because truthfully, though inspired by one particular situation, it applies to many more in my life right now, and it’s been on my mind a lot. I hope it makes sense or encourages those of you in similar difficult situations.
My advice: Don’t drink the poison. Don’t sow the rot. Instead, grow the peace.