When the Harvest doesn’t come
Imagine you decide to plant a garden. You envision a bountiful harvest with all different types of beautiful fruits and vegetables.
You get to work tilling the soil, planting seeds, and doing the work. After a weeks of work, it's time to sit back and wait for the harvest.
One day you arrive at the garden and realize some of your work has been in vain.
Some of the vegetables are overripe, others didn't develop properly. And without your consent, the rabbits snacked on the veggies, and the insects enjoyed the fruit.
The entire harvest isn't ruined—just a small portion of it. Nonetheless, you're frustrated that it didn't turn out the way you envisioned.
You have two choices:
You could give up and admit you aren't the gardening type OR collect the good fruit and vegetables into baskets, take them home and enjoy the harvest you have.
Let's agree that the best option would be to enjoy what you can.
That still leaves us with the rotten fruit and overripe vegetables. What will you do with that?
Two more options...
Throw it out, and hope next year will be better or collect it into a compost heap.
If we throw it in the garbage, it's gone forever.
On the other hand, if we compost it, we would put it back into the garden and add even more nutrients to the soil, giving us an even better harvest next season.
Life gives us the same options when things don't go our way, when tragedy strikes, when uncertainty happens, and when we find ourselves in circumstances that we do not prefer.
We can push our problems to the side, or we can do the more challenging work of composting the parts of our lives that we wish turned out better. And when we do, we allow the pain & hardships to be the compost that grows resilience, creativity, connection, understanding, and love.
When we plant seeds next season, they will grow with a beauty and richness that would not have been possible without the compost.
Enjoy the harvest, compost the rest.
Learn, Grown, Develop from everything, and everyone.