12 Oct Nurturing Confidence
There is a book called The Carrot Seed that I remember reading to the girls when they were little.
In the story, a little boy plants a single carrot seed. He is certain it will grow. With each turn of the page, the little boy’s mother and father and brother all tell him it won’t come up. But still, every day, the little boy sprinkles the ground with water and pulls the weeds around the seed.
And one day, a carrot comes up. Just as he knew it would.
The final drawing shows the little boy carting away his big orange carrot in a wheelbarrow.
I thought of this story last week when Emma and I were making soup. We had lots of spice jars on the counter, including celery seed and cumin seed. For fun, we decided to plant a few of the seeds in some tiny pots to see if they would grow.
“They will come up,” Emma said, with the confidence of the little boy who just knew his carrot seed would grow.
If hope is the belief that the seeds will grow, confidence is the belief that we can contribute to making it happen.
So, every day, Emma and I nurture the seeds. We gently sprinkle water on the soil inside of the tiny terra cotta pots and place them next to the windowsill for some morning sunshine.
I am careful to avoid nurturing any of the doubtful chatter I sometimes hear in my mind, “These seeds won’t come up…they would have come up by now.”
It’s been over a week and there’s not one sign of a sprout. And yet, we keep caring for them anyway.
Hope is a collaborative, interpersonal process. And between us is an unspoken commitment to continue to try.