“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
The harvest you reap is a thing of the past. You cannot do much about your harvests, apart from handling them with the fullness of dignity available to you. You do, however, have complete control over the seeds that you plant.
There is no way in the world to control how your thoughts, words and deeds will be received by others, nevertheless, it still makes sense to package the gifts you give to the world around you in a way that they are most likely to be received and appreciated. This, in fact, is one of the greatest challenges those who dedicate themselves to being a blessing face in the world at large, for the stony places in man’s heart can be a difficult place to garden.
You can be sure that some of the blessings you offer will be received graciously, welcomed in fact while others will be rejected irreverently and occasionally violently. If you base the quality of your giving on the nature of the reception you will be disappointed most of the time. Take care to emphasize the former and disregard the latter, apart from seeing how you might approach it differently next time that it might be better received and all the days of your life will be generative.
“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.” ~ William Shakespeare
Gregory Hake 
This is an important thing to understand. A corollary to this is that some of the harvest that you reap did not come from seeds of your planting, but such is life. The way you handle the harvest of your actions is important, because in a way your handling of those situations is the planting of the future seeds themselves. If you handle your harvest poorly, you will have to reap the harvest from the poor handling of that situation as well. If you find yourself in a cycle like that, make sure you are handling what is coming to you with aplomb, because today’s actions are tomorrow’s seeds.
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Changing your life one seed at a time. Thanks for the powerful words.
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The spirit of seeds planted will ultimately be revealed, although the transitory results may be quite varied, depending upon the nature of the soil. How people receive the seeds of words, for instance, can be so radically different depending on interpretation, prejucicial reactions and so forth. In the long run, however, the nature of the seed becomes apparent wherever it has the chance to gestate, sprout, take root and emerge.
So often a person’s sowing can be driven by reaction to a harvest, good or ill, and on that basis the past is always driving the future – a recipe for a looping downward spiral! Wise, indeed, is the one whose focus remains on the quality of the sowing. We can enjoy pleasant harvests and navigate unpleasant ones with dignity if our concern is always lovingly centered in the seeds of the future.
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Good way to start the week, thanks.
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The Shakespeare quote is classic……no kidding, impossible to predict what will happen and how people take things, and I suppose the wise always are looking how to best work and deal with the available fertility of the soil that their seeds are to be planted in. So, good advice to give most of the weight to what you do and what your expression looks like out of you rather than to how it was interpreted. Not to say to disregard the effect of it – a right thing said at the wrong time is still not helpful – but start with what would be the right thing to do. I’ve had to think about this many times when faced with not knowing what to do in a tricky situation at work or whatever, especially if I had contributed to that situation somehow in the past. So, making the change to clean up what I contributed to in part — this is where it is helpful to know to just accept that, but concentrate on the present and what you can do effectively now that is different and can be the new impetus for change.
Wow, I just realized that there is a lot of hope contained in this idea. Thinking about this in times of trouble can breathe back a sense of optimism and dispel some of the bleak, futile thoughts one can have if the attention is focused just on the harvest when the harvest looks mixed up. There’s even a sense of forgiveness somehow wrapped up in this concept. I guess life is forgiving in so many ways, and we simply need to be way open to it, as soon as possible before things get too out of control.
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