Don’t be the discarded grass seeds of potential found in paddock slashings.
Do something with your human potential!
Hay is food for livestock. The grass seeds are potential for future growth. When ingested, they pass through into a fertilized environment! Now that is a value chain. And every stage is a metaphor to be inspired by. Human potential, like the seed potential, align in their limited imagary as neither reveal their fulfillment till their purpose is realized.
Paddock slashings spread on the ground
My wife met a horse trainer by chance – at an opportunity shop. The discussion meandered into: Well the person that wanted those bags of manure I have been carrying in the boot of my car has not bothered to show up for two weeks. Said my wife: If you want to get rid of them, I will take them for my garden. With much gratitude, car boot contents were swapped! Pauline asked: Do you get much more? – Every week said Liz. I will talk to my husband and see if he will take me to your place with his trailer!
A date was set to get some more rich horse poo! Amazing how those bales of hay are transformed into these bags of fertilizer said Joseph. Yes, said Liz, but this lot (many trailer loads of hay) is not what my horses eat. Those bales at the back are what we use. Now I have to get rid of this useless paddock slashings variety! What? Wait! Would you let me have the discarded hay? Yes sure – you will be doing me a big favour.
So now Joseph and Pauline are making a number of trips across unsealed country roads and navigating the trailer between stables and sheds for the best position to be loaded (by hand!) – of both hay and poo.
Garden and lawns
And here is the parallel: All human beings are metaphorically, seeds of potential. When properly nurtured and set in the right environment, human potential is encouraged to grow. With independence of self sustaining choices, humans ‘become more of who we are’, and assert what will be our destiny. Then there is a flourishing and a fulfillment of meaning, duty and purpose in a win-win way. Just like the masses of grass seeds, human potential is vast and varied. It takes one unique individual to embark on that quest to make a difference. It takes one human being to look for the value in another. To become more of our own human potential, we need to develop an attitude of magnanimity.
Today’s large employment environments have come to mean that they are churn factories of talent. Individual human beings are utilities and consumables for the balance sheet. There are many examples of organizations attempting to change this. Sadly, even more examples exist to perpetuate the waste of potential, energy and contribution.
Sometimes, potential is just not visible because the required perceiving paradigm does not exist. Even happy, ‘respect for the individual’ organizations depart from valuing potential in the face of stock market demands.
Then you have the ‘wrong’ hay. Corporations call these redundancies for whatever reasons of changed strategic direction, re-structuring, automation, outsourcing etcetera, etcetera. There is also the issue of employees not being ‘engaged‘ at work which has reasons and consequences. Yet always, there is a new welcome for the individuals affected. We have to seek it out and create an opportunity to receive the new.
For individuals, a new role may not be the “same again” comfort in a different landscape. However it could be an amazing release of untapped potential into new paradigms with completely alternative measures! It does nevertheless, need changed mindsets to create the environments from individuals seeking to be fulfilled, and in those who create the opportunities to be filled.
And yes, that horse manure is the parallel reward for effort! If you treated the paycheque as fertilizer…….. it could be used to sustain a lifestyle; it could be spread thick or thin, or it could be re-invested in part at least, to germinate new seeds of potential.
Grass seed slashings to germinate new growth
Joseph and Pauline’s property has experienced draught and inundation. Topsoil is washed away, and bald patches promote even further erosion. Whilst the manure fertilizes new plantings, the once rejected hay is spread to break down on the bare patches, providing the environment in which the grass seed pods can germinate. But smart wisdom from traditional peoples teach that to be successful, you have to time such propagation with respectful following of the seasons and weather patterns. So planting when some rains lend a hand, and the absence of water is aided by the humidity of straw breaking down to provide an organic nutrition covering is the way to go.
If you see opportunity, then you must also be open to potentiality in all around you. It is literally life changing when you do. Imagine if your opportunity seeking mind was anchored in the appropriate context for your life’s purpose. How would you see your world? Could you be that human being full of potential ready to be tapped?
I feel another parallel coming on…………….!