On the topic of sowing and reaping

Once again, a remarkable post of Rebecca Elvy's made me think - this time about the metaphor of reaping and sowing used about the things we do in our daily lives - and about when to reap and when to sow, respectively.

As so many other people, I am a descendant of a long line of people who were into farming - my grandparents, as well of two sets of aunts and uncles, earned their living from farming, and one thing that was for certain when we went to visit them was that we always were able to predict what they were doing before we came there, from just a glance at the weather and the calendar. Because in agriculture - at least in the Northern European part of the world, there is most definitely a time to sow and a time to reap.

And the metaphor of sowing and reaping is still very appropriate - because at certain times, we seem to spread our resources on the ground around us with no apparent return on investment, while at other times it becomes obvious that spreading our resources was a very good idea, because our effort comes back to us manifold.

But to us who have left farming behind, the world is quite different from what our ancestors experienced - because where they could easily tell from the weather and the calendar when it was time to sow, and expect a certain return to come at a more or less predefined time determined in detail by nature (apart, of course, from disastrous times of harvest failure), our situation is much less predictable. When we sow, we have no idea when the time comes when we will be able to reap (if ever), and have no certain reason to expect what we will be able to reap, if the time actually comes.

For me, the only conclusion is that given these conditions, we must sow whenever we have got any surplus of energy to spare for that purpose. We have no reason to believe - nor even hope - that we might reap anything from it, but still: what we sow will certainly make more use if we spread it, rather than hoarding it, only for it to decay (if you allow me to stay in the metaphorical universe of farming). 

And then again, we still might one day see that there will be something to reap from what we have sown. And we will realise that while this happens, we actually have fun, spending time in flow, sowing our surplus resources - and that we stumble upon people in the process; people that we inspire and who hope to inspire us in return.

So there is no reason to stop sowing for long - sowing develops us and the people who surround us, and we might actually reap manifold from it at some undefined point in time. Whereas hoarding what we could sow - or only sowing based on detailed calculations indicating that the related harvest is certain: to me, it just does not lead to anywhere constructive. Part of the fun, actually, is the thought of "I don't have any idea of whether this will lead to anything I can reap - and if it does, I have even less of an idea about what will come out of it."

(Translated from Noget om at så og høste)