The 20 Little Cherry Tomato Sprouts and Its Worth

You don’t have to do great things or go to extravagant places to learn about great things in life. From simple things or ordinary places like the backyard, you could extract some basic qualities that are helpful to finding greatness. It’s kind of wordy, I know. And perhaps it’s not so obvious that I am so obsessed with greatness and not just the word itself. I just simply believe that we were created in God’s likeness, meaning we are meant to be not just mediocre but great. God is great! It’s not the trying- to-be-like-Him kind of greatness, because someone had that mistake, causing his dominion in Hades’ kingdom. I mean greatness in our own ways…

Let me just tell you my story to make my point a little clearer.

Not so long time ago, I have always loved plants. There is something in them that’s magical. Who would have thought in the beginning that a seed looking like dead stone could become a shade tree? No one! You might say that it’s pretty of obvious, it’s science! But no, it’s not just science. Science is only capable of explaining things based on observations, theories and what’s happened. If science could create something we could call life, the closest it could get is a synthetic version of what already existed. In the beginning everything in life is a mystery and it’s still is. Because of its possessed mystery, I realized that plants continue to amaze me.

People used to say that I have green hands or green thumb. It’s the term they call for someone who could easily grow plants. People would say: “your garden looks effortlessly abundant; I couldn’t even keep one plant on a pot.” Way back until high school, I used to have a garden at home. Whatever I plant on in, it would grow like a wild grass no one could trim. Sometimes, I would plant camote tops, pepper, tomato, eggplant, and my most favorite of all, ginger. Ginger is mysterious. It could show off its smell through its elongated leaves without exposing its true essence, which is hidden beneath the surface. One time when I saw its body dying away, I thought something was wrong with my garden or maybe it was infected with pests. With my Lola, being an expert of farming and gardening, I’ve learned that gingers die only from the outside but continue to grow underneath the soil. She would dig from my supposedly dead ginger garden a handful of healthy plump gingers, which she would use for my favorite salabat (ginger tea).

Those times I thought of becoming an expert in plants, I wanted to take a course related to agriculture and science. It turns out that reading about modern day science has its great influence on me. I took Computer Engineering, which of course has nothing to do with plants. For a few years, I have worked and lived away from home. And there’s no way to have a garden of my own just anywhere. I thought the gift of green thumb would be gone.

When I saw the 20 little seedlings of cherry tomato I planted on a Styrofoam, I felt relieved. And I realized that locking inside whatever gifts we have won’t make them go away. It will only be a dead asset. Like the ginger from my dead ginger garden, our gifts will only be of GREAT use when we dig and show them to the open.