The Tomato Tale

Cleaning the kitchen refrigerator is one of the top ten mundane household chores. While cleaning ours a couple of months ago, I found an almost rotten tomato that had been hiding between the racks for weeks. Rather than throwing it in the garbage, I decided to give it to the squirrels and birds that frequent our garden by dropping it into one of the adenium pots.

Weeks later, while watering the plants, I noticed a healthy tomato sapling that had sprouted. It was growing rapidly, developing new shoots and branches, and even flowering. Last week, after a thunder shower, I found that the tomato plant had almost dropped dead under the weight of other foliage. As I cleared things up and was adding some support cords for the plant, I realized that my plant had over a dozen tomatoes.

As someone who loves plants and greens, it is always a delight to see a plant grow, flower, and bear fruit. This morning while watering the plants I was amazed to see couple of these tomatoes turning red on the vine.

I'm amazed by the journey of that rotten tomato, which was destined for the garbage bin and would have ended up in a landfill. By making the casual decision to drop it in the adenium pot, it has become a promising source of tomatoes for our kitchen for weeks.

In our personal and professional lives, we make decisions that may not seem significant at the time but can have far-reaching consequences. In my professional life of over two decades, I've made decisions that have changed lives. Looking back, I realize that majority of the second chances that I signed off on, have turned out to be success stories later.

You never know what looks rotten and worthless today may expound to be a source of new opportunity and success.

Nature has inimitable ways of teaching us by example, and often we are so engrossed that we miss those signals!