The Beans Story: The Lesson That Seeded Bloom-a-Bean™

When Idi Amin deported all foreigners from Uganda in the seventies, my parents were forced to leave behind their sizeable wealth to restart a new life back in Kenya. As a young kid living in poverty, I recall a day when we went to bed hungry even though my mom had brought home a two kilogram can of dry beans. Instead of cooking the beans for dinner she decided to plant the seeds for a future harvest!

My siblings and I had spent the long day waiting for mom to bring back food from the market. It was therefore shocking for a child my age to hear her say that the whole pack was ‘going into the ground.’ When mom took no notice of our grumbling stomachs, I looked to my brother for a reasonable explanation of mom’s decision…

We will “drink milk-less tea and go to bed,” said my brother.

“But, the harvest! The harvest will be mighty… and the lesson? …. Even greater.” explained mom.

“Translation? Colored water for dinner.” My brother simplified it for me as a matter-of-fact, taking the time to help me understand the unfolding torture.

“But the mighty harvest is going to be a century in the making,” I thought. “By then I will be a grandmother.’ I said.

“We will have all the beans we could ever eat. A lot more than planted. Colorful, fresh, healthy.” He explained, buying into mom’s bad idea.

It should have sounded exciting when mom said the harvest was to be many times greater than the amount planted, but it didn’t. I just wanted some food – now! Frustrated with mom’s unwillingness to negotiate, I gave up the fight and went to bed hungry … and angry.

It took over three months for the beans we planted to mature for harvest. Meanwhile, my mom continued to keep us hopeful as we continued to faithfully weed, water, fertilize and protect the beans for what felt like a century. We got many cans - over 1500% harvest - from the one can we planted! I am yet to confirm with my mom, but I believe that 40 years later, a portion continues to be put aside and planted each season.

The lessons we learnt were life changing and life sustaining! They were greater than our grumbling stomachs, our appetites for instant gratification. They were greater than just money lessons described here. And most importantly, we survived! Here are the numerous lessons you’ve been waiting to hear.

The lessons

Lesson 1: Delayed gratification aka planned patience (forfeiting a smaller quicker gain for a larger/better future goal). Today, I do wait when needed because I learned patience from the beans’ story. For me when there is a time stamp on anything, envisioning the harvest keeps me hopeful and I can then persevere and endure the wait in between.

Lesson 2: The time between planting the beans and harvesting felt like an eternity to me. Patience and hope are what kept us waiting. There has to be Faith in the means and the end; There needs to be Trust in yourself and/or whoever plants & cultivates what you are hoping for.

Lesson 3. Between planting and harvesting there was cultivation – We had to Weed out anything that could chock the beans, guard against theft (animals eating up the beans), mitigate the effects of the unpredictable weather, Create an environment for the crop to blossom, fertilize, water, etc

Lesson 4. Seeding must come before harvesting not the other way around. Avoid the wrong order – Earn it before you spend it. Doing this in the wrong order is what has led to the current debt crisis for many. By spending money they don’t have, they self-sabotage by getting compounding interest to work against them.

Lesson 5: The future of anything can be found within the thing, as potential. Our harvest had been sitting in the one can of seeds we planted. According to Dr. Munroe, a seed has within it, the tree that it will become. The tree is the seed’s potential, even though the seed may look nothing like the tree it is meant to become. I learned that I had a calling, and whereas it may not have been evident at the time, my calling was sitting within me, as potential, waiting to be brought to life.

Lesson 6: As earlier stated, the growth of a seed in to the right tree is the seed’s assignment. Its future is not ahead of it but trapped within it as potential to ensure that true success rests in becoming what it was meant to become. So are we. Success is in applying your true potential to your rightful purpose.

Lesson 7: If you want a return, don’t eat the seed.