What Goes Around, Comes Around

I have never gardened, but I remember a childhood friend whose parents had a huge garden every year. How I loved their fresh tomatoes, still warm from the sun, sliced with some salt on them. Delicious. Sometimes the crop would be much larger than expected. Tomatoes everywhere! My friend's mom would work feverishly canning the tomatoes, making homemade ketchup, and in the dead of winter I would be invited to their home to enjoy the most wonderful spaghetti. The sauce was made from those tomatoes that became ripe the summer before.

Sowing and reaping. My friend's dad planted tomato seeds and got tomatoes. He didn't get green beans or onions. He got tomatoes. (Unless he didn't mark where he actually planted the tomatoes, but that's a different story.) Whatever we sow, we shall reap. It's a lesson from nature.

Funny how expecting the worst can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People sow seeds of doubt and anger and bitterness, then act surprised when that's what they reap. If that little seed packet has a picture of tomatoes on it and is labeled tomatoes, if you plant those seeds you are going to get tomatoes. Pretty simple. What goes around, comes around.

I would much rather plant good things, a positive attitude, kindness, gentleness, and have all that great stuff come back to me. Now you can treat someone well and have them treat you badly in return, for you don't always reap what you've sown immediately. The harvest can take a while. It requires patience to be a gardener. The seeds are small and just a few, but the bounty can be huge. More goodness than you know what to do with. Now that's the way to live.

Susan