ENTRY #10 A Blessing For All

I was barely six years old I remember, when my father encouraged me to put an orange seed I had finished eating into the earth I was standing on. I don't remember exactly how long it took but after some years, I found myself sitting under an orange tree I had planted myself.
First, my father told me what would come out of the seed if I put it in the soil, "it'll grow into a big orange tree and bear many fruits", he said with a big beaming encouraging smile. I smiled too but mine was mixed with box doubts and anticipation. I was confused but went on and tried.
He told me to water it two times each day, mornings and evenings. Ones or twice when I was late for school, I'd ask him politely to water my plant and he'd say it’s not his job. If such days persisted, I'd come home to meet a shriveled plant that looked like death itself. But when I watered it regularly again for the next few days, it looked fresh.
Many times I had to uproot the growth around it. Once I hesitated to uproot a nice flower that was growing close to my plant but my father said "As much as you love flowers, you don't want any plant competing with the one you planted for nutrients. Do you?" So as difficult as it was, I still had to uproot the flower.
So I went through so much taking care of my plant, especially because I was just a child and not a farmer. But it grew up beautifully and blossomed, yielding many oranges. I had a plan: the orange tree and all the fruits were mine, I own it and I was going to use it alone. But there was some strangeness about this tree; it produced so much that I couldn't eat the fruits alone, not even my family. So sometimes kids from our neighborhood would come and pluck a few oranges without my knowledge. So one day I asked my dad, "Why do I have to work all alone on the tree and when it finally grows up, I can't benefit alone?" My father's reply was weird. I did not understand it until a few years ago. He said, "God knows everyone and his toil, and legitimate hard work will never go unnoticed. When God finally blesses you, there is no room on this planet that can contain your blessings. Even the people around you will be blessed too." He said it is no one's responsibility to help you, that's why he didn't water my plant. He then added that no matter how beautiful something may be, I shouldn't allow them to ruin my bright future. That's why I had to uproot the flower even though I loved it. That way I would grow and be a blessing for all.