Seeds of Hope

I recently watched the movie The Lorax  based on the Dr. Seuss classic book. Tears welled up for me at the end of the movie when our hero, Ted, plants the last truffula seed. His world had always been plastic – plastic trees, plastic grass, plastic food. No real living things. And here he was planting this seed with the hope of not only growing a beautiful tree, but of changing people's ideas about caring for the trees as well.

The Lorax is really a story about the environment. But to me, he was planting SEEDS OF HOPE. He was giving people an opportunity to step back from their busy lives and ask themselves if their “normal” is what they really want.

Ted's world had become plastic and unreal and we too can see this in our external, physical world. But what about inside? What parts of our insides  have become unnatural and “plastic”? Because this is the root of our real problems. How can we be connected to our environment when we aren't even connected within ourselves?

Each of us has a certain set of gifts and challenges. We have things that we instinctively love to do and things we don’t. Each of us is a perfect combination of traits and qualities that make us wonderfully unique – and when we're doing any of these things, we are happy.

Unfortunately, inside we are filled with ideas about what we SHOULD do or think. We have expectations about ourselves that have nothing to do with WHO we are.

Maybe our ideas about honour, pride, correct behaviour, fairness, and what's important has been implanted into us at various points along the way.

And the funny thing is that we already know the parts of our insides that are “plastic” – they are the parts that we don't like – the judgements, the “shoulds”, and the voices of everyone else that we let in over the years.

Our disbelief that we can do anything about these things has led to a world where anxiety and depression are the norm. The idea of planting a little HOPE is just the ticket - and the sight of little Ted planting that truffula seed certainly was for me. Why? Because anything is possible.

So imagine this vision from The Lorax: Hundreds of townspeople surrounded by their plastic lives watching little Ted planting a REAL SEED – tilling the soil, putting the seed in the ground and watering it. They all stand around in awe as they know something wonderful and important is happening.

And then we can look inside of ourselves. Within our complicated self, we imagine one tiny seed of our authentic self being planted and watered – nothing big – just a seed - as the rest of our self watches in awe and wonder as we witness something REAL and WONDERFUL being planted and nurtured within us. Because anything is possible.

Katrina Bos, your Station Agent