“If you want the juicy fruit, you have to torture them a little.”
I don’t think my Ya-ya meant to be so dramatic, but the lesson stuck with me. If you want to get the most out of your tomato plants, you need a bit of tough love.
With most tomato varieties, if you don’t give them any water as they’re coming into fruit, they put all of their energy into the fruit, rather than the bush, and the tomatoes become extra juicy and sweet. Delicious.
It’s one of the funny truths of life. The journey to peak potential involves periods of ‘torture’, or at least, less than optimal conditions.
Imagine you had been raised as an indulged monarch from birth. You had never known excessive heat or cold. You never had to exert yourself. You had never gone without a protein and energy rich meal. You never even had to wipe your own arse.
Imagine the kind of being you’d be.
Probably fat, lazy and incompetent. Completely useless.
And a long, long way from your potential.
Optimal conditions, all of the time, are disastrous for humans and tomatoes.
We probably want a cycle of sweet and hard times. Exercise and rest.
This lesson is easy enough to take into the future. From now on, when ever I meet a challenge or go through a period of failure, I will remember that whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, and I will soldier on.
I’ve written about this more than once.
But what about the past?
Are we able to look back at the full stretch of our lives and be grateful for everything life has ever thrown in our road?
If we look back at our failures in business or school. The relationships that never worked out. Can we see those as experiences grooming us into the beings we are today, ready to be the beings we’ll be tomorrow?
It’s easier said than done.
Or what about if we go back to our childhood? The mother who had something negative to say about everything we did. The father who stomped on our ambitions. The siblings who stole attention, or bullied you.
All those factors that shaped the frameworks you met the world with when you finally went it alone. All the subconscious beliefs you were saddled with – that there’s never enough to go round, they you don’t have any talent, that everyone’s out to get you.
The things that can take a lifetime to unwind.
Can we look at these even and be grateful for the lessons they taught us or are teaching us – for the beings they’ve help us become?
That’s harder still.
Or what if we go even further back to the lottery of life. I was a talented footballer in my day, but I didn’t quite have the genetic gifts to represent my country for a living. Should I waste time resenting that? Or be grateful that it’s pushed me into this game instead – my real calling?
We’re all born with different strengths and weaknesses. Some people have smarts, some people have looks. Some sods like me have neither.
But can we look at our “failings” too and be grateful for the way they’ve shaped our lives?
Few people ever really take this work on.
But I hope you can see how necessary it is.
The secret, I reckon, is to allow.
We need to allow these pressures in our lives. We need to accept that we weren’t the prettiest or the smartest or the most talented at school. We need to accept that our pop was a mean old bastard most of the time. We need to accept that our relationship with our ex descended into a screaming bunfight that burnt everybody.
And by that I mean, we have to allow the fullness of these experiences. And that means even the pain. We have to be able to allow the pain of these experiences.
We can’t resist them. We can’t try and compensate for a shorter stature with faster cars, or plumper legs with fancier shoes. It’s a massive and fruitless waste of energy. You’ll never win.
And if we can’t let the pain in, then it will never shape us in the way it’s meant to. If we’re always resisting it, always holding our own shape against the pressure of the experience, then we’re resisting an opportunity to grow.
Like a tomato plant refusing to face the reality that there’s less water, continuing to pump life force into the leaves, rather than recognising it’s time to give energy to the fruit.
(Man, I hope I’m making myself clear. Sometimes I find myself half way through these things thinking, what the hell am I writing? Y’all feeling me?)
There’s also a lot of trust here. Trust that these painful experiences are ultimately exactly what you need. Trust that life has some plan for you, even if it’s not the one you wanted.
Everything happens to you for a reason. It’s your fault. You called the lesson in. Now you need to find the inner-strength to fully allow the experience and everything it has to teach you.
You thought you wanted to be a bush, but life wants you to grow fruit. Life knows best. I thought I wanted to play pro-soccer, but life wanted me to write horticultural wealth psychology.
I trusted life, and it’s the best thing I ever did.
But don’t think I’m just talking about changing directions – just a shift in the compass. I’m talking about allowing painful and challenging experiences to reshape you at your core – even if it smashes you into bits and you have to put yourself together piece by piece.
The Japanese have an art form called ‘kintsukuroi’. This is where they taken broken pottery, like bowls and stuff, and repair them with gold or silver lacquer.
The idea is to celebrate the brokenness. It’s the brokenness that gives the piece character – that gives it beauty.
The bowl would have been lamenting its fate – to smash on the kitchen floor – but now its elevated from utensil to high-art.
You never know what life’s got planned.
Trust and allow.
And let life torture you a little.
What painful experiences or personal failings are you grateful for?
S:) says
Horticultural Wealth psychology – love it. My mantra over the past few weeks has been ‘pain. pain, pain … trying to acknowledge it and let it flow through and out.
Nev Stone says
What a timely article. The Universe certainly provides!
Letting go of the judgement of MY self through all of life’s little travails has been a long journey. I have even got to hate the term “Survivor” because that term is still an acknowledgement of the other side… the “victim”. But we all need to feel hardship to highlight the up side of life. I am like everyone in that we all have experienced things that hurt or create difficulty. Without the difficulty it is impossible to appreciate the up side. the trick is not being a victim to the hardships.
Whatever things have happened to me and the way that I handle it is the stuff that has forged the “who” of me. If I see my self as a survivor or victim it just doesn’t matter. The truth is that some stuff happened and I dealt with it as best I could at the time, with the tools that I had available. If I judge myself at all it means that I have not properly learned the lesson. By allowing an experience to be dealt with as intelligently as possible, and to hold no regret as to the outcome, but accept it as a learning experience is the aim.
Learning the lessons is what gives strength. To go through hardship in whatever form yet accept the lessons gained – without beating myself up if it wasn’t what I thought was a “Good” result – and to go out the other side truly wiser is my aim. I see it with all successful people in various forms. True success is not just a bank balance, but a bank balance sure buys the opportunities to do greater things!
I find it amazing that to be able to do all the hard work and research required to succeed but with better clarity through less internal judgement means I make better decisions. It strangely also seems to bring about success in a lot of unexpected ways.
Thanks for the tomato metaphor! I love it’s sweet tasty message!
al says
before the days of nail guns – used to love driving 3 inch bullet head nails into the timber wall frames that we stood and put together as the walls of new houses and went home knowing their was a god that knew i needed a hammer and lots of house walls to make and so – we – mates all agreed the ‘great naing grace – I’m pissed off today = nailing wall frames together faster race’ was ‘on’ whenever anyone said – I’m over it today – who’s in? and we carried on like bullet gunners until we either finished and moved onto next stuff or knocked off early and laughed together at the work we got done – when we just ..”shut up and got on with it ” and shared the burned out diggers head space and it never failed to make us bloody good mates as we lived..
……. GRRRRRrrr is good when in physical work – we also always said – thank our choice of occupation as otherwise – what can ya really do with a bloody ‘biro’ mate?
Antichrist says
Too often in life we get overcome with the I..the self…our journey…and we are all too easily fooled by ourselves and our ego. That we have had it tough. that we have not been dealt a good hand of cards…that we have to suffer a lot more than others…that we are not lucky….that life isnt fair.
When one steps outside of that paradigm…perhaps walks a few miles in others shoes, we start to get the feeling, the understanding that we are all- everyone of us- “suffering” (as the buddha would describe it)…that we all have a wheelbarrow of shite to push along that windy bumpy uphill path called life. Hopefully this helps to give rise to compassion for our fellow travellers.
Success however comes not only with that understanding… but also to realising that the wheelbarrow we are pushing often needs to be emptied..taken off the path and given a good shake out…a metaphorical wash…to dump all the crap that we inadvertently place in there…the conditioning from our upbringing..our self perceived sorrows, our disappointments, our angsts, our desires….our insecurities…and then the journey becomes all that more tolerable.
To accept the pain ..understand it…to repair the wheelbarrows flat tyre…to try to remember to avoid those sharp rocks in the future..and to get back on the track.
And dont forget..to finish in line with jon with a gardening analogy…that those whom dont plant flowers, tend them, water and fertilse them,. will not get nothing..they will get weeds… Get Planting!
Ed says
Great article! Reminded me of a concept that was shown to me 3 years ago: every bad event also has an equally good value to it; be grateful for it and take the opportunity to find the upside to it.
For example, I left work one day fuming with anger and hatred, I then accepted what had transpired and shifted my assessment of the situation and I was beaming with delight when I arrived home as I have set my mind free from a particular shackle and thus setting me up to revisit my goals and action plans. The best revenge is success!
Steven Hambly says
Great stuff. I was picked on enormously at school and was a quiet, shy guy that did not get noticed much the rest of the time. I remember a bully once told me I would ” never get any” . But what I never lacked was the drive to achieve and experience things. I think the difficulties I faced early on shaped me to be relentless in my pursuit of achievement.
I now have 10 properties, my own business a daughter and loving partner and have experienced almost everything that I ever dreamed of doing to date. This little tomato turned out OK.
Graham Wright says
I love your stuff Jon. G
Ruth from Brisbane says
Just what I needed to hear today. Thanks Jon.
Jo blo says
well written
Tom says
Thanks for the ‘biological’ horticultural tip!
Have never heard that idea about tomatoes before. Must try it if ever my tomatoes get to that stage.
Does it apply to “Cherry Tomatoes” as well as the larger ones? These are the only ones we can grow, on account of Queensland Fruit Fly. Luckily, they seem to avoid the small ones for some unknown reason. They love the Cumquats which are about the same size.
From childhood, we ALL progress through life, with problems. But the only ones we are aware of are our own ones.
Strangely, we seem to assume that everybody else is on easy street, without a care in the world. We are the only sufferer – the only ‘victim’. We don’t realise that even the most ‘successful’ are wracked with self-doubt, that the bully is behaving that way, not because of any genuine, justified sense of superiority, but rather because of his/her own perceived ‘raw deal’.
I remember arriving back at College one night and finding one of the
most popular and successful students, sitting like Christopher Robin
half way up the stairs – neither up nor down. But he was literally crying. “Oh God, I’m a
useless Cunt!”, he kept saying. Admittedly, he had well and truly overindulged on
ethanol, but it was a real eye-opener for me! We had all looked up to
and respected him – even envied! He was such a popular, likeable, successful guy!
“Walk a mile in my shoes” evidently
even applied to the most admired academic and sporting achievers!
Eventually, each of us hopefully comes across some caring soul like Jon who is prepared to care about others; to try to ease the plight of those searchers for truth who need help in navigating life’s tortuous pathways.
Luckily, as Nev Stone says in his comment, “The Universe certainly provides!”
It never ceases to amaze me how frequently a fortuitous remark or other unexpected experience comes along, just at the right moment – out of the blue!
Thanks Jon. We owe you a lot for your contributions to our understanding of the life we are experiencing, day by day, in this bountiful land. You also solicit many wonderful comments from readers.
We love it – and you, if you hadn’t guessed. We appreciate this “generous, thoughtful, cheeky Jon” far more than we would have, a “dribbling Jon” on the soccer pitch!!! Or were you a “Goalie”?
al - says
Hi Tom … I may be an ‘old hat’ – but despite that or not – ‘c…t’ is more than adequate to paint that picture .. we are all losing over moralising minds at an accelerated rate … but if we keep going – even if in ‘private sites’ I believe we are just extending that derogation generally faster and faster … I doubt Jon would really be fairly impressed and is it necessary for any others you do not usually relate to (as in your own personal circle – that would seem to accept) it ? … thanks … A lot of women may not be saying anything and I noting as a bloke – I am not very impressed – it was not a thoughtful collective term even though … ‘dic…ead’ is as common as daily bread and …. thanks for hopefully understanding – where I am coming from – women 1 – Jon 2, all respects 3.
Matt C says
Absolutely bang on. Just like Jamie McIntyre says, a migrant is much more likely to become a millionaire here than a person born in Australia because they experienced more hardship.
natasha says
Thanks Jon, and it’s nice to be reminded sometimes and hear it from like-minded people. I also loved the Japanese bowl – very inspirational to me on this morning. I’m going to put a picture of one on my fridge. It’s quite comforting! Thank you again : )