I am of the belief that everyone has a secret longing—perhaps not-so-secret among the more bombastic of us—to experience more life. To the deluded, this is a longing for luxury, a pomp-induced comfort catered by a trust fund and scantily-clad individuals befitting one’s own sexual palate. The more lucid understand that this fuller life simply exists somewhere in the uncharted realms beyond their current perimeter, and that really can mean anything. It is this unknown quality, this unchartedness, that scares us away from ever venturing forth. If only we could send others, our own Lewises and Clarks, to explore the veiled territory for us. Then we could know what lay outside our sphere of influence without ever have to risk our current existence! Thus, entire industries were birthed from vicarious experience, and we’ve celebrated Shark Week ever since.
But simply knowing sharks exist, or that Old Faithful erupts every ninety-one minutes, or that people in Southeast Asia eat dog meat does not enrich our lives in any way. Knowledge may be power, but it is not inspiration, experience, or wisdom. Take it from a kid who used to carry a pocket dictionary around to correct people’s vocabulary: knowing facts does not lead to fulfillment (or a plethora of friends).
Acknowledging this, Kaitlyn and I decided to follow a calling on our hearts to go to Africa to write, live, love, serve, and generally explore what lies beyond the perimeter we know. It means leaving behind concepts like “home”, “work”, “movie night”, “free Wi-Fi”, and “potable water”. We knew that we weren’t going to make it with the miserable jobs we were working, so we stepped out on a limb to work on commission with an emerging local roofing company in Denver that we judged to be going in a great direction. Because obviously the next step from substitute teacher and waiter is roofer. We’ve gotten our vaccines, guidebooks, broken our lease with our apartment, and convinced our families that we won’t die.
But here’s the predicament.
We’ve scraped up some travel money, made the savings account sacrosanct, and accepted that we’ll be surviving on bean-and-cheese quesadillas for the next two months. We finally received our first commission check: a glorious $436, and it’s enough to buy flights to Ghana with the money we have saved up. But if we do, we’ll be completely broke until the next check comes…whenever that is. We’re caught between practicality and passion.
As I prayed about this problem, I was given an interesting analogy. It seems to me that many times in our lives, when we’re trying to make ends meet, we are given a seed. This seed may be as small as a sunflower seed or as big as a coconut, but we get one of them. And we’re hungry, all of us. We have this simple choice: eat the seed or plant it. We know that if we eat the seed, we can survive until the next seed falls on our path; we’ll be hungry, but we’ll survive. Alternatively, we can plant the seed, but this is risky. It might not grow big enough, or fast enough, and we might starve to death staring at the ground. But what if it did sprout? What if it shot up and bore fruit we didn’t even know existed? How full we’d be, how very fulfilled.
I think most of us eat the seed. I know I’ve eaten a lot of seeds in the last two years alone, and I’ve planted others that I grew impatient with and either abandoned or dug up and ate. Some people hoard their seeds, smoke their seeds, or throw their seeds into strippers’ thongs. That seed might be a food stamp, an investment, an inheritance; it might be trust, an opportunity, a glance in the right direction at the right time. How many seeds have you eaten that you wish you’d planted somewhere? How many times have you put the seed in the ground and never seen it again? And how scared are you to put that damn thing in the dirt?
