Motivational Monday: You and Your beautiful garden
For today’s Motivational Monday, I want to share with you one of my favourite stories from Paulo Coelho’s Like the Flowing River’. It is titled ‘ Looking at Other People’s Gardens’.
‘You can give a fool a thousand intellects, but the only one he will wants is yours, ‘ says an Arabic proverb. When we start planting the garden of our life, we glance to one side and notice our neighbour is there, spying. He himself is incapable of growing anything, but he likes to give advice on when to sow actions, when to fertilize thoughts, and when to water achievements.
If we listen to what this neighbour is saying, we will end up working for him, and the garden of our life will be our neighbour’s idea. We will end up forgetting about the earth we cultivated with so much sweat and fertilized with so many blessings. We will forget that each centimetre of earth has its mysteries that only the patient hand of the gardener can decipher. We will no longer paying attention to the sun, the rain, and the seasons; we will concentrate instead only on that head peering at us over the hedge.
The fool who loves giving advice on our garden never tends his own plants at all.
Isn’t it a great story?
I am sure at some point in our life, we will meet this ‘neighbour’. Some may appear as well-meaning, but most, just want to see you become like them.
There’s a saying - ‘free advice is the most expensive of all’. And this ‘neighbour’ is all about free advices. Therefore, in working on our garden, be very aware of this ‘neighbour’ and his ‘free advices’.
Personally, I have made many mistakes by listening to this ‘neighbour’. I thought they ‘knew better’. So I follow them, only to discover that this neighbour’s garden is bare and ugly! Not any lush trees in sight. Not any blooming flowers. Dead, and boring.
So I asked myself, do I want my own garden to be as dead as theirs?
I want my garden to be beautiful. I want trees; all sorts of trees to grow into lush greenery. I want flowers of all colours to bloom everyday, all year round. I want it to be filled with lovely scents that travel miles away. I want my garden to bear sweet fruits and sprout aromatic herbs. I want it to be bustling with bees and butterflies and ladybirds. I want my garden to be so beautiful that it will put a smile on people’s face. And that smile will last them for days, and they want to keep coming for the garden is so beautiful it inspires them to plant their own gardens.
Let us all diligently work on creating our very own beautiful garden. Do not pay any attention to this nosy ‘neighbour’. After a while, his neck will get sore from peering over our garden’s fence and he will leave and go back to his dead and ugly garden.
© Copyright Naziehah Mar 2009
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