This morning, my money plant taught me a lesson. It is a young plant, and I fell in love with it as soon as the gardener brought it up. It has beautiful leaves, pale cream with light green streaks. It's a very young plant, and I kept it as near the door as I could, the better to protect it. I love my plants and care for them very lovingly and carefully. I water them every day and keep the leaves free from dust and see to it that nothing happens to them. With great happiness I saw one tiny leaf after another emerge from the stem. However, to my dismay, I saw that as soon as the leaves became a little big, they were falling off. Now there are only 2 leaves left, and then it struck me. The plant needed the harsh heat and hot winds to strengthen it. It needed the dry earth. This pampering was doing it no good. It needed to undergo Nature's toughening process...
Aren't we like this plant? We think we can grow in a protected, controlled place, cocooned from the outside world. We feel apprehensive about facing the world. We feel scared when the harsh winds of change blow, and wish we could hide somewhere. We curse and rail at our fate for having put us in trying situations. Paradox is that we need these to grow - we need the harshness and even cruelties of life to test our mettle and make our true worth come out. The gardener had told me not to water the plants every day - the roots have to go down deeper and deeper to suck out the water from the soil, only then would the roots become strong and spread out. Isn't this a lesson for us as well? The comforts of life will never allow us to stretch ourselves. It is only when we learn to do without that we learn what is really worthwhile, and what the true value of things are. If we allow ourselves to be surrounded by goodies, we will never know what we are capable of, we will never be able to explore the goodies that lie within us...
Truly, we just have to allow Nature to teach us... what better and more loving teacher than her.