“Elly, what are you doing, honey?”
“Sortin’ out the seeds, mommy,” little Elly said. She had
scattered a pile of mung beans in front of her and was sorting them out between a pink cup and an ordinary paper cup.
“What goes into the pink cup, dear?” her mom asked.
“They are the happy seeds, mommy!”
“Happy? How do you know they are happy?”
“I look at them very closely,” she took a seed and stared intensely at it that she almost got cross-eyed.
“Then…?”
“Then, I feel happy,” she giggled as she placed the last seed into the pink cup.
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then it goes into the other cup.”
* * *
We may not have Elly’s gift of discerning happy from sad seeds. But we all know, without needing any special gift, when we are either happy or sad. Moreover, we are aware of what can make us happy and what can make us sad.
The usual cause of common sadness, not including psycho-emotional disorders, would be unfulfilled goals and expectations. This is especially true when we have sincerely worked for them. But this kind of sadness has a redeeming value in fortifying one’s will and tempering the passions. It is unlike the sadness resulting from selfishness.
Selfishness, is a kind of sadness masked by an apparent happiness. One actually isn’t happy but only content with oneself: to have eaten, enjoyed, slept and earned. The only capacity for growing in this condition is the thickening of the ego’s layers and blinding one from the needs of his neighbor and society.
One of the best ways to overcome this selfishness, more so when one is really feeling down and out, is sowing happy seeds. How can one who is sad sow happiness? Humanly speaking, this is quite unnatural because it would be hard to give what one does not have. But spiritually, this is not only meritorious, but will even make the soul happier and holier.
Fulton Sheen has a reflection that may help us to better understand the idea behind Christian self-giving or sowing happiness:
“There is a law about mercy just as rigid as the laws of nature. What we sow, that also we reap. If we sow sparingly, we reap sparingly. If we sow generously, we reap an abundant harvest. (…) In other words, by thinking of others we get God to think of us. If the seed of the springtime thought only of self, but never of the soil, the rain and the sun, it would never bloom and blossom into flower and fruit. But once it forgets itself and goes outside itself, and even dies to seed-life for the sake of the soil and sun and air, lo! it finds itself renewed and beautified a thousand times. (The Cross and the Beatitudes)”
Let us learn to sow happy seeds every day. Even though sometimes the weather conditions don’t seem all too favorable due to discord, violence, lies and all forms of immoral storms and surges.
Thus, Pope Francis would suggest that the keys to happiness within our families and society could be found in “three secret phrases: “May I?”, “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry. (Audience, 13-V-2015)”
* * *
Elly finished sorting out the beans. Her mother could not help but be amused with this child’s game she was in.
“What are you going to do with the sad seeds, Elly?” She asked.
“I guess I will plant them in the backyard,” she replied.
“You will still plant them? Why not throw them in the garbage can?”
“Nah, who knows if they change, they may give wonder flowers and seeds later on,” Elly stood up to dispose of her seeds.
“How do you suppose they will change, dear?”
“Maybe I could cheer them up with a song or a joke before planting them,” she said gleefully as she disappeared behind the kitchen door.
* * *
If we patiently sow even the tiniest seeds of a smile, understanding and kindness, the bad weather will pass and the seeds –even the ones that seem sad– will bear fruits of happiness and peace watered with God’s grace and mercy.