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The Story of the Bag of Seeds

One day a boy brought a dixie cup filled with moist dirt home with him from school. His mother asked him “what do you have in the cup?” The boy replied “a beautiful flower for you mother” She smiled and said “what kind of flower?”
“A white one”. She smiled and said, “that sounds like it will be a beautiful flower, let’s put it on the window seal so it can get some sunlight and grow.”
They put onto the seal and the boy looked at it for a moment before going on to play.
His father opened the door that led from the garage to the kitchen having just driven home from work. He got a glass of water from the sink and drank it quickly until empty. He set the glass on the window seal next to the dixie cup with wet dirt in it and remember doing something similar when he was in grade school.
At dinner, he asked his son “what’s in the cup?”
“A flower for mother”
“Oh that’s nice”
He thought about a reoccurring conversation he had with a friend at work today. This same conversation with his friend was becoming irritating now. He thought to himself “If I have to hear about Russ’s plans to start a business so he can finally quit his job and be happy I’m going to tell him to either do it or quit talking about it” “It’s like every day now.” “Why doesn’t he just do it already or do something.”
For years Russ had been talking about opening a bakery, but then would talk about all the things that he had to do before he could. There was the location, the equipment, the lease and a small loan he needed. The fact that he didn’t have enough saved yet. Whenever he would offer some encouragement or advice to Russ he would come back with an excuse or a reason why that wouldn’t work or not yet until some other roadblock was cleared.
Russ had brought some baked goods from time to time to work to share with everyone and they were always a hit. Expressions of support to open the bakery fed his confidence but never translated into action. One of Russ biggest hang-ups was his fear of finding out the cost of a lease on a few places he wanted to put the bakery.
The father had an idea that might help Russ. He went downstairs in his house to the cold storage room and open a bucket filled with wheat, pulled some out and put the wheat seeds into a snack size ziplock. He put the Ziploc and a little potting soil in a small dixie cup and took it to work the next day.
At lunch when he and Russ were talking he pulled out the dixie cup and bag of seeds and hand ed them to Russ. ” What are these?” Russ replied confused.
“Seeds.”
“Ya, I can see that, why are you giving them to me?”
“Because I’m tired of you handing them to me every day thinking I can plant them.”
“What are you talking about?” Russ said intrigued.
“Every week you talk about your bakery and how you just need to get something put into place and then you can open. Well, here you go.”
“Ok, thank you?” Said Russ “Now what?”
“Go plant them!” The father said.
“Will it grow into a bakery?” “If so then you’ve got some million dollar seeds here! HaHa” Said Russ
“Haha, no they are wheat seeds, but if you treat these seeds like you’ve you been treating our idea of a bakery then all they will ever be is a bag of seeds and all you’ll ever have is just an idea of having a bakery someday.”
“They won’t grow unless I plant them, and my bakery won’t grow unless I plant that seed for real.” Russ sheepishly concluded
“Yup! So what is the first seed you are going to plant to grow that bakery?”
“I probably need to go and find the building owner and get real about the terms of a lease, then at least I’ll know what the next step is”
“Now we’re talking!” “And oh by the way they are wheat seeds.” The father said with a wink.

We each have some seeds we carry with us and show others. All they want to do is to plant them so they can watch them grow.

Oh, and the boys seed turned out to be a beautiful white flower.

Nathan Kahlil Harris

No one can take what you have, you are the only one.

I dropped of my twin daughters at their junior high school this morning and saw a boy walking in that I though was a pretty cool kid. He didn’t look like the others. He had big thick curly hair and was built larger than most his age.  He had on a backpack and looked very studious with his black rimmed glasses.  

I wondered what he thought of himself.  It got me thinking what others thought of him.  I thought to myself I’ll bet he’s a really cool kid.  Not because of anything I knew about him, because I really knew nothing about him other than what I saw.  I just thought he inherently was a cool kid.  Because we all are.

I hoped that he had a good self image of himself and self confidence.  I hope that others would recognize it in him.  

I thought to myself that he’s the coolest kid wherever he goes.  We all are.  Literally no-one could be cooler.  Physically he is the only one that could be that cool where he stood.  And so are you. Where you are no one else can be and no one else can be you.  No two people are the same and no two people can be standing in the same place at the same time.  You own it and you own you.  No one can take what you have. You are the only one like you and there will never be another one just like you! What a gift you are.  We all need you and what makes you you.  The most enjoyable people to be around are the ones that love who they are and know who they are.

I hope you recognize how unique you are and that what you have to offer to the world no one else has. Be kind to yourself and you will be kind to others.  Smile at yourself and others will smile at you.  

Remember you are the one who can make a difference that matters!

Nathan K Harris

When will you be really ready for it?  Truth is probably never, it’s rare that we feel that were are totally prepared for an event, an interview, a contest, an appointment.  For me it seems there’s always at least one thing and most likely a few things I still feel needs to be tweaked or improved before “it” happens.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it can hold us back from trying, doing, creating, learning, progressing, and finishing.  We can take too much time preparing and planing for the inevitable and never do what we intended to.  It’s never going to be perfect, well almost never.  There will always be room for improvement.

Whenever we attempt something and actually go through with the task and thereby completing it we always learn something.  We recognize our failures and our successes in the moment, and that is the beauty of it.  Once we commit to the project we’ve begun the process of discovery and growth, which we never would have gained by staying on the sidelines waiting for everything to be just right.

You have to start somewhere to get anywhere.

So Start, and then you will see what you have to do to get to where you want to go.