HOW SEEDS GROW INTO GARDENS

 




“Life is the soil, our choices and actions 

are the sun and  rain, our dreams are the seeds.”

Richard Paul Evans

 

“I really don’t care how much you score in your exams;” I keep screaming, with all my temper and passion, each day in my class, “but, I seriously care about the basics of your life... the foundation.”

Now, when I scream like this before a young college student, why do I remind him about the ‘basics of life – the ‘foundation’ – now, when he/she is in his mid-teens?

In this Post, I wish to touch upon only two such fundamentals: keeping an unbiased mind, and keeping our commitments. And, I wish to single out two of my students...





One was very close to me when I started teaching here in Mumbai (Bombay) in 1980. This young boy, now is a retired person (from a government organization). He got reconnected with me on FB, some years ago. I have been able to scan the kind of mind he has developed over these years... It’s very, very narrow, extremely polarized, openly hateful towards other communities, faiths, cultures, views, and he presents himself as an unapologetic ‘hardliner’...

Seeing this, I wonder: “When did these seeds of a polarized and prejudiced view of life begin to fall in him – in his early school, or home or college? Did we – his teachers or parents - sow  them?”

The second young man, about whom I am going to talk in this Post, is presently of the same age – 17. I have been teaching him for last two years... and, yes, just like the other young man, who has retired now, I have been screaming, with all my temper and passion, each day - “I really don’t care how much you score in your exams; but, I seriously care about the basics of your life... the foundation.” The basics I am trying to drill into this boy’s head are the respect for time and keeping his daily commitments. No matter in how many ways I try to drill it into him, he simply cannot reach in time, keep his words and, worst, he can be unapologetic about it...

Let me tell you, from my experience, this: No one can teach us how not to develop a prejudiced mind, and how to respect time and daily commitments. These are the choices we make for ourselves; these are our own actions. Yes, even the finest seeds need fertile soil and blessings of the benevolent sun and the wind... Teachers and parents, sorry, they seldom pollute a tender mind...

As a young dreamer in this big city, around the same time – sometime in 1980 – I had found a torn copy of Russel Conwell’s inspirational essay – ‘Acres of Diamonds’. What I remember the most, from the author, is this line:

 

“I ask for not a larger garden, but finer seeds.”



 


Yes, the seeds grow into gardens. But, Sir, it’s our choices and actions – above all, our dreams – that decide the kind of gardens the seeds grow into...

 

GERALD D’CUNHA


Pic’s: 1. Alliance of Hope  2. storage.googleapis.com

Video: Viral Voices/AGT

 

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