What We Nourish is Strengthened

Share

Most people know the story of sour grapes. The wolf, unable to get what he seeks despite his best efforts, concludes that they must have been sour anyway as justification to his soul for failure. I know a few folks at the gym who, after a few weeks of concentrated effort, conclude that it's not worth it because they have yet to see results. I have tried several times to grow trees from seed that never bore fruit, but I keep trying, because I know that what we nourish tends to grow.

Consider if you will two different men with broken arms. The first visits a physician who puts the arm in a cast and checks on the arm regularly. The second concludes that it will heal on its own and ignores it. If the first man's arm recovers and the second man's doesn't, one might conclude that the extra care and nurture of a physician and patient contributed positively to the strengthening and recovery of his arm to near normal function before the action. If the second man's doesn't heal, he might be inclined to conclude that it wasn't worth saving and wasn't going to recover no matter what. This is a problem with faith sometimes, that we expect God to do everything and then ignore our part to avail ourselves of every tool at our disposal.

Our habits, our beliefs, and our relationships can be likened to seeds we plant in the ground. If we just trust everything to fate, they are probably unlikely to survive the elements let alone grow up and bear fruit. Someone just tried to convince me that my problem is expectations. The fallacy that expectations are inversely proportional to serenity assumes that if I expect nothing, I will be perfectly free, perfectly at peace. If I expect nothing, what impetus do I have to act, to do anything? If I expect nothing and do nothing, what can I hope to harvest? If I nourish nothing and then assume it's the fault of the grapes that I didn't get a harvest, does that sound wise? Balanced expectations matter. Realistic expectations allow us to store up hope, which is critical, because without hope, we are in despair, literally "hopeless" and then that's neither serenity nor happiness. It's hopelessness. Like most absolutes, I reject it because it's illogical.

We act in life and nourish things because we have faith that there will be fruit from the harvest. I know this sounds redundant to regular readers, and I apologize. I had two bushes in my yard die inexplicably last summer. I realized the first did not have a water line to it, and in the summer heat it burnt up and died. That was not because there was a problem with the bush. The problem was mine. In the case of the other, I was spraying some weed killer on the grass adjacent to it and got careless. The poison strangled the bush and killed it too. I was the reason in the end both of those died, because I didn't nourish them or nourish them well.

Perhaps I'm less serene because I actually own my mistakes. Last week someone actually blamed me for something that didn't work out in order to ignore their own part. What I did was not a secret. Who I am is not a secret. If you read random posts here, it will tell you oodles about what I believe and how I am likely to act in a given situation. What I don't know and don't control is what other people decide to nourish. If a neighbor comes by daily and dumps poison on my plants, they won't survive no matter what I do. If I leave my yard in the care of another while away for a prolonged period and they neglect to water, the plants my not survive. People nourish things because they believe it will work. As soon as we stop believing it will work, we stop putting in effort, and then we erroneously conclude when it fails that we were right to stop nourishing it. This is also a logical fallacy because sometimes we are the cause of our own failures. If you do not believe you can do a thing, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy more often than not, to the point that we never attempt or do not give our all when we do. Wrote the Bard, "Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by failing to attempt" to which I add "or failing to attempt a thing well".

Sometimes, it takes more than one person to nourish something in order for it to succeed. They say that Love is like a rubber band. When one person lets go, the person who holds on is the one who gets hurt. As long as two people genuinely invest to make it work, love usually works and remains. Someone once told me that any two people can make a marriage work if they are committed to God and to each other. However, if one person decides to quit nourishing it, the other person cannot usually sustain it, and it dies. The person who quit might then conclude as do the friends of the person who held on that it was probably bad anyway. The friends do this to console their friend. The other does it to console themself. Well, that ignores the fact that someone quit. I am fairsure my ex wife believes that I'm a bad guy because things didn't work with us even though she consistently and quickly abandoned her obligation to make it work. There is only so much one man can do alone, and in any endeavor that takes more than one, he cannot sustain let alone strengthen what takes more than the effort of which he alone is capable.

Yes, it is possible that the grapes were sour. Yes, it is possible that my relationships were never going to work. Yes it is possible that you might not ever lose 50 pounds, get that perfect job you want, be able to afford the beach house in Malibu, or become an astronaut. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Even if the shot isn't a good one, we make them sometimes because we decided the possible benefits outweighed the costs.  Every Olympian who decides not to compete will not get a medal. It's not necessarily because the judges were biased, the track was sabotaged, or because the results are rigged. If you don't nourish it, it cannot be strengthened except by accident. Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes the reason is because you did not act well your part.

Sometimes things we nourish still die, but things we neglect rarely become what they ought even if they survive. The bush I killed with poison was well watered and otherwise healthy.  The water was not the only influence on its ultimate potential.  I am not the only force in the garden of life, and sometimes an enemy comes along and sows trouble in the wheatfield, and every time we deal with another agent, the best we can do is to do the best on our end. If you're on a bobsled team and someone quits, you probably won't win even if they let you compete. You never know the grapes are sour until you honestly give your best effort and taste the final fruit. Most people I know quit because they no longer desire the fruit enough to continue striving. Fortunately for us, God never quits striving with us. He knows that if He stops believing in and assisting us, we are not going to draw closer to Him. We only know the grapes are sour when we actually taste them. Anything less is a guess and does a disservice to things that might have been.

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been". --John Greenleaf Whittier