PAST AND PRESENT

A father owned a fertile piece of land. He planted some seeds and told his sons, “I may not live to see it, but twenty years from now, you will see an orchard of fruit-bearing trees here and benefit from it.” After twenty years, the sons looked at the land and saw only a barren field. There were neither trees nor fruit.

The sons investigated and discovered that their father mistakenly believed pieces of rock were seeds. The father had watered the land and sprinkled something, but they were not seeds; they were pieces of rock. Clearly, an orchard grows from seeds, not from pieces of rock.

If you observe a nation whose leaders, for a hundred years, have organized grand movements, spoken beautiful words, and given the people great hopes, but now the country is falling into ruin, you will see that none of its affairs are well ordered. From any perspective, it lacks the solid foundation on which nations stand.

In this case, it is accurate to say that past leaders did not plant seeds of trees but instead scattered pieces of rocks in the name of seeds, and such pieces of rocks never grow into a thriving garden for any nation.

The present is always shaped by the past. As the past was, so is the present. If an individual or a group inherits a present with nothing for them, they should not blame oppression or conspiracies of others but recognize that they didn’t take meaningful actions in the past. As a result, they have no genuine results in the present.

Accepting your past shortcomings motivates you to revise your actions today. By acting differently now, you can achieve what you couldn’t before.