Hello friends
I modified the title after Jill's brilliant suggestion. Thank you Jill ...
I hope you have all started your week well ... and thank you for supporting my forums and threads. This post is dedicated to some close friends of mine who have been there for me ... and they know who they are ...
This past week has been a very trying one for me, full of the kind of hurt and negativity which almost drove me to leave this community ... which, I guess, is why I am having so many eccentric senior moments lately, as Phil Black called them ...
But it's funny that .... when we least expect it ... the person we least expect it from.... makes us stand up, pay attention and start thinking again .... as has been the case with my good friend Vasin ... who posted something really interesting in my last thread and started the ball rolling again ...
Vasin said .... <<If you have 40000 friend here when you have 10 of apples how can you share for all?>> ...
My reply was ....
<<Nobody here has 40,000 members as their friends .. so the 10 apples would not have to be divided between 40,000 ... but if you share the apples with those you do have around you, then you can spread the joy they received from you ... to others ... and those others can share them with others again ... and the joy becomes infectious ... people would learn to grow apple trees and share their apples, they would begin to set up communities and plantations to have more and more apples ... It is not the amount of apples ... they will grow ... it's the quality with which the apples are shared ....>>
It only takes one apple to make several people happy, as it can be cut and shared. It only takes one person to have the idea to plant an apple tree ... and it only takes one good apple seed to grow a tree ... that, in turn, can provide tonnes of apples and even more tonnes of happiness for a whole load of people ...
If all those people, who had felt joy at receiving an apple, followed suit and kept planting ... soon there would be enough trees and apples to go around for all.
One infected tree will infect the apples and, if left un-cured, will spread disease like a plague ... In order for the tree to continue to prosper well, the disease needs to be cut at the root of its evil ... It's a lot easier and quicker for disease to spread and kill ... than it is for an apple tree to grow and give fruits ...
But the really interesting thing is that ... if someone comes up to you with a piece of apple and says:"here you go sweetie...enjoy it" ... you would take it with pride and even if you never ate it, you would treasure it ... but if on the other hand they said .... "ok ... here take it"... and proceeded to kind of throw it at you in a discontent fashion ... you'd find that you don't really want the apple at all ... so the real issue here is not the apple but the way it is given .....
Bottom line is .... The joy with which we give ourselves, and our friendship, is the joy that we as people will receive back ultimately in life ... It is the way our friends will perceive us and be there for us in our hour of need ...
Sometimes it is better to give and spread that joy rather than to receive ... even if it means we, oursleves, suffer the hurt as a consequence ... but, surely, knowing that we have spread some joy should be reward enough ...
...but, as human beings, there is only so much pain one person can take before they stop trying to plant seeds to grow apples ... so, next time you are mad at someone and they are mad at you ... offer them an apple ... and see where it leads ...