"Are You Evil?"

 

So, there I was, heading over to my new favourite eat-and-meet place, and I get as far as this big, spreading tree when this voice from behind me says -

"Excuse me ... can I ask you a question?"

I turned, and there were two absolutely beautiful young women standing behind me. They looked terrified.

"Ask," I responded.

"Are you evil?"

I look at the girl who asked this. No trace of mockery in their faces. Just a need to know, and the terror of finding out.

I have whole conversations in my dreams. This is what I said.

"Tell me which memory you would like to take with you, all your long, joyful life, to tell to your kids and grandkids - the story of how you met Evil on the road and he turned out to be a perfect gentleman ... or the story of how you met Evil on the road, and he turned out to be horrid?"

Of course they asked for the gentleman, so I smiled.

"Then a gentleman I am!" I replied. "Brilliant! That means I won't have to change my shades!"

I beckoned them to come closer, to join me under the tree. They looked hesitant, but I told them "It's about to rain," and they approached me.

True to my word, it did start raining.

"So," I said, looking into their rapt eyes, "tell me what it is that you would like to know, now that you have my complete attention." That was not a question.

The girl who first asked me if I was Evil piped up without hesitation. "What do you do?"

This was a good question. I paused, and looked her in the eye. "This might seem strange to your ears," I said, "but the thing is ... I'm by way of being a gardener. Of sorts."

The girls frowned. "How do you mean?"

"Everybody is a garden," I added, "full of good and evil. But the crop must be cultivated with care, whichever one you want to bring out in that person."

I leaned in closer, and lowered my voice. "The thing is," I added, "I'm not the only one." I looked at them both. "Everybody is a gardener. We tend both to our own inner crop, and to the gardens we find in all of those around us."

I was practically close enough to them to reach out and touch their cheeks. "In my case, I like to cultivate the Light whose seeds I see deep in everybody. I cultivate, I water with motivation and intention, and I leave that Light to discretion, to grow in its own sweet time."

I gave them both one last grin. "And now that you know what I know ... now that you have seen through my eyes ... it's now your duty to do the same. Because when other people's Light shines on you, it will fertilise your Light, and bring it from germination to full bloom, in next to no time."

And I finished with The Voice, which some of you have heard, and which put a tiny thrill of terror into the girls when I said "It is my very great pleasure to have met you."

"Life isn't something you can give an answer to today.

You should enjoy the process of waiting, the process of becoming what you are.

There is nothing more delightful than planting flower seeds and not knowing what kind of flowers are going to come up."

-- Milton H Erickson