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GREAT AMERICAN THINK-OFF FINAL FOUR ESSAYS FOR 2003

DO WE REAP WHAT WE SOW?

Arthur Yuwiler, Woodland Hills, CA Age: 75 Occupation: Retired

NO

Do we reap as we sow? Is what we have the product of what we do? Absurd! A comforting myth.

One of my grandsons is retarded, trapped in the inky blackness of a mind that does not work. He has no language. He is not toilet trained. He is subject to terrible generalized seizures which grow more violent as he grows older and these seizures seem impervious to all existing seizure medications. He is growing into manhood in the darkness of a blighted mind. Yet he is very sweet. He cuddles. He does not scream as some. He does not complain. Sometimes he moves about, flapping his hands in agitation, avoiding eye contact, grimacing. More often he merely sits for hours on the floor tearing paper or mindlessly moving a string back and forth. He hears and sees but does not respond to noise or silence, to ducks or barking dogs. He is lost in the darkness of his mind. What has he sown that he should reap such a bitter harvest?

A contrast is his younger brother, a scholastic whiz. He is an actor, a writer, a dreamer. He makes up stories. His fertile mind gobbles up the offerings of mathematics and history and sociology and science as one would gobble ice cream and he asks for more. He too is sweet and fun. And his mind is a plaything, a source of infinite amusement, of infinite wonder.

Is he reaping what he has sown? Has he sown so much more than his brother, that he is so rewarded.

And what of their parents? Their mother, my daughter, is unusually sensitive, empathic, bright. There is no sweeter person on this earth and this view is not mine alone, not just that of a doddering parent, but is one shared universally by all who know her. What has she sown that she should so reap an endless cloud over her life? Nor can this be the father's harvest, either, for he is brilliant and though overtly less sensitive, has never deliberately injured another human in his life. And the reward for their goodness?

Go to my older grandson's class. See the children there in wheelchairs, those gasping out a short life, those tormented by bodies or minds that are misshapen, and malformed. Follow the wheelchairs home. Ask their parents what their children had sown to have reaped such horrors, what they themselves have done to cause their children such pain. Go to any pediatric cancer ward, ask any newborn with Aids, or Tay Sachs disease, or Hurler's syndrome, or Niemann-Picks.

The preacher may say we reap what we sow, that he that lives by the sword shall die by the sword. Yet Genghis Khan reaped only Kublai Kahn and both died of old age.

If indeed we reaped what we have sown what need would there be to invent a Heaven or a Hell? The meek would always inherit the earth. Good would always be rewarded and evil always punished.

But it is not so. There is a randomness in the earth. We are punished and rewarded for things we do not control. No one picks when to get born or where. No one wires his own brain or chooses his height, his weight, his body parts. We do not select the color of our skins, the wealth or temperament of our parents, the ethnic group into which we are born or even our gender, yet these color our lives and influence the sowing and often the reaping. An untouchable starving in India may well sow differently than one born to the aristocracy in England and surely they will reap differently.

But if we do not reap what we sow, if in this life or another we are not rewarded for goodness and punished for evil, why should men be good? For, indeed, most men are.

We are good because we are social animals. Our survival as a species was dependent on it for we cannot match the lion in strength nor the deer in speed. Only our concerted efforts and our enlarged brain allowed us to conquer both. It is no accident that every major religion has a golden rule and most, some form of the ten commandments for they are necessary for men to live together. We are good, not because we sow what we reap, but because we must.

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David Shapiro, Seattle WA, Age: 46 Occupation: Teacher

NO

To think that we get back from God or the Universe (or whatever) in some way that's proportional to our actions is a mistake in at least two ways. First, it assumes that the universe is a much simpler place than it really is. And second, it represents a kind of intellectual arrogance to imagine-even if actions were to rebound in some way to their originators-that human beings could understand such a complex cause and effect relationship. Here are a couple of stories that I hope illustrate these two concerns.

To begin with, picture me, a tow-headed little kid of six, in shorts and a t-shirt, planting my first tiny garden. Dad has helped me clear a small patch in our backyard-near the septic tank, where the soil is particularly rich-and so here I am, walking barefoot through the half-dozen rows we have constructed, poking seeds into the soil with my fingers. I've got corn, carrots, peas, and, although Dad has assured me the local growing season is too short for it, watermelon, my favorite. I start out by putting the seeds in quite carefully, but as my planting session finishes, I'm strewing the remains of each seed packet with abandon. Tiny carrot seeds cascade down among the dried peas, corn kernels, and watermelon pits.

Afterwards, I water and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

To a six year-old, an hour can be a year, an afternoon, a lifetime. The weeks I wait for my seeds to grow are beyond an eternity. Eventually, there is no temporal connection between the time I have planted and the time in which sprouts finally began to appear; they're two separate eons, disconnected from each other across the time-space continuum.

But sprouts do appear, and with watering, grow, and grow, and grow, until finally, I have a garden full of.weeds. And a few tomato plants. Neither of which I have sown. The weeds-dandelions and clover, mostly-have arrived of their own accord, born upon the breezes. And the tomatoes? Dad concludes they are the spawn of undigested seeds in the nearby septic tank. So yes, I have sown something and yes, I have reaped something, but there isn't a connection between the two. And this, I think, illustrates the way of the universe; there is reaping and there is sowing, but former does not, in any obvious way, imply the latter.

Second illustration: Flash forward four years. I'm 10 years old and still farming the backyard. Now, though, the object of my agricultural activity is a scrawny little peach tree which I've been painstakingly cared for over the past three summers. At last, it has produced a few blossoms and, as the season wears on, those blossoms have produced the first few orbs of fruit. Seven fuzzy peaches ripen slowly in the August sun, and as September arrives, my "babies" are almost ready to pick. School starts, and each afternoon, I return from Mrs. Woolhandler's 4th grade class to check on them. Their combined weight bends the little tree earthward; and yet it proudly hangs on, giving them continued sustenance.

Now comes the afternoon I plan to harvest. All day long in class I imagine the fresh peach flavors bursting forth in my mouth. On the way home from school, I stop and buy a box of vanilla ice cream so I can get Dad to make his famous dessert concoction, "Peach Melba" a flaming delight of peaches, ice cream, and burning brandy. I rush through our house, grab my jackknife for cutting, and head out to the backyard. There, I see a couple of bulldozers, some flatbed trucks, about a dozen men in overalls, but no peach tree. The entire periphery of our backyard, and those that adjoin it, has been torn up. Installation of the sewer pipes that will replace neighborhood septic tanks has begun. My peach tree, technically lying outside the border of our property, has been dug up, dug under, and disappeared.

There will be no harvest of peaches for me, only tears.

Could I possibly deserve this? Only the most hard-hearted cynic could claim that this sweet little ten year-old boy, who loved that tree with all his heart, was reaping what he had sown.

Nevertheless, I think that a relationship between reaping and sowing does exist; I think, though, this question has it backwards. We don't reap what we sow; rather, as my sharing of these stories illustrates, we sow what we have reaped. We are conduits for the experiences that come to us. I am not receiving from the universe in proportion to what I have given; rather I am giving back-and I hope generously and with due respect-all that I have been fortunate (and at times unfortunate) to have received.

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Brad Buschette, Prescott WI, Age: 35 Occupation: Stay at home Dad

YES

I am four years old. I haven’t eaten for a week. I am drinking water that contains something I am not allowed to talk about. Where I lived is now gone. We are trying to get away from the planes that drop bombs. I do not understand any of this. My dad is dead. I was a bad girl last week. I know that this is my punishment.

To begin, we must dismiss the world of theology. No matter the religion, no matter the belief system, if there is any sort of concept of an afterlife or a continuation of life, we reap what we sow. Even the most feel-good of religions in which everyone achieves an afterlife of paradise, contains a reaping of seeds sown. Those who punished the "lesser" while alive must now be their equals.

This argument must go to here on Earth. Is there an overriding justice that rewards or punishes on the basis of action? I would argue "YES." Please, understand, I am not speaking of some otherworldly, Oversoul, type of transcendental justice; rather, I am hinting at an internalized, subconscious justice that forces us to reap what we have sown. This justice, based on the moral and ethical system that each of us possess, forces us to punish or reward ourselves on the basis of our actions and our own subjective reaction to that action.

The criminal who leaves but one fingerprint on one piece of evidence, the suicide, the bulimic, the guy who defrauds his company because he felt underpaid; these are all extreme examples of this system at work. Imagine Poe’s Telltale Heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The heart calls from underneath the floor to the guilt-addled murderer.

William Westmoreland, architect of pain, suffering, and death during Vietnam; suddenly, after thirty years, admits he made a mistake. Vietnam was wrong. What I did was wrong. His punishment was just like that heart, a constant drumming in his head, "You’re a murderer!" "You’re a baby killer!" It took some time, but now, as an old man, he spends his last days on Earth praying there isn’t a hell. He is reaping the whirlwind.

What about the beautiful, vibrant young woman who was abused as a child? She finds herself at thirty with two children and a husband who beats her on a daily basis. She didn’t plant this seed! It was planted before she has time to develop her own morals and ethics. Now, though, at thirty she starts to see what’s going on. She leaves her husband, marries a new, wonderful man, and starts her own business. Why? Not because of happenstance; she finally realizes she deserves better and rewards herself by moving beyond the system set up by her horrible father.

Of course these are the extremes. What better way to show this system at work that the obscene examples? Day-to-day life has plenty of its own examples. I haven’t had a candy bar for two weeks, so today I have one. I ate five plates of food at Thanksgiving, so now I’m going to starve myself for the nest two weeks. I drank too much last night, so to subconsciously punish myself, I will not take aspirin before I go to bed. We’re finally out of debt; let’s buy a new couch. Each day holds thousands of chances for this system to work.

Does this system of justice punish or reward all? Well, of course not. Recently we’ve heard that 100,000 children in Basra, Iraq will dies as a result of thirst, starvation and the other plagues of war. Will those who sow this horror reap horror? Are the children harvesting their own crop? To say ‘Yes’ to either question would be to ignore the obvious and turn this discussion into a joke. The first group will retire to their palaces or estates on the periphery of some private stretch of beach and not feel any pain at all. The second group will die a painful death, knowing nothing of pleasure, knowing nothing of what they did to deserve this. In these situations, my system of reward and punishment is still at work. These two disparate groups have no ethics or morals at all. The first choose to ignore the morals, the second haven’t had time to develop them. One can only hope (or pray) that there is justice after death for these two groups.

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Roxann Sorenson, Alexandria, MN Age: 55 Occupation: Artist/Educator

YES

In the longest running Off-Broadway musical, THE FANTASTICKS, the scheming fathers celebrate the dependability of gardens:

Plant a radish
Get a radish
Never any doubt!
That’s why I love vegetables,
You know what you’re about.
Plant a bean stalk,
Get a bean stalk,
Just the same as Jack.
And if you don’t like it
You can always take it back.
They’re dependable
They’re befriendable
They’re the best pal
A parent’s ever known.

Children on the other hand, are a mystery to them as related later in the song:

While with the children
It’s bewilderin’
You don’t know
Until the seed is nearly grown
Just what you’ve sown!
So, plant a cabbage
Get a cabbage
Not a sour kraut
That’s why I love vegetables
You know what you're about.
Life is merry
If you’re very
Vegetarian.
A man who plants a garden
Is a very happy man!
It is just this time-lapse between sowing and reaping that creates a dramatic tension in our lives individually as well as collectively, and may cause us to doubt if we will ever reap the benefits of our actions.

The ancient law of karma insists that we do reap the results of our actions, as does the scientific law that states "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." However, do we look to reap one or two bushels of corn when we plant a field in the spring? No. We look to harvest hundreds of bushels from our labor, equipment costs, fertilizer, and herbicide treatments. We always expect to reap more than we sow!

If our desire is to reap strawberries, we have to plant strawberries, as well as cultivate, water, and harvest them at the time of ripeness. If we want to have a peace-filled life, we must walk the path of peace in our everyday lives, being vigilant in our every thought and deed to express compassion and gentleness, the hallmark of peace.

When I had the desire to live a life in the country, after spending most of the first twenty years of my life in the city, a door opened and I stepped through it. I wrote the vision for my life after two years before it manifested and at the age of 24 I was able to move to a family farm near Alexandria that has now been in my family for 112 years.

I was open to receive the abundance that was already prepared for me. Did I reap the rewards of a great-grandfather who purchased the land in 1891 and passed it on to my grandfather? Yes, indeed! Do we plant trees just for ourselves, or for future generations? Do we maintain the health of our land for ourselves, or for future generations? Can we separate the two?

In the tradition of many Native American peoples every action is measured on a scale that takes into account seven generations to come. If it will have an adverse effect on any of the seven generations (approximately 140 years into the future) to come, it is not done. Do we have the same regard for our own descendants? They will surely reap the rewards or problems that we are creating today.

We always give to ourselves. Whatever we wish to receive, we must be willing to give. If we want clean water, we must not pollute the air. If we want wild and free places, we must not build cities and towns on every square yard of land. The fathers in THE FANTASTICKS knew that vegetables were more dependable than children, but we continue to grow children and to reap the rewards of a well-tended child.

The world has become ever smaller in this age of instant communications and global trade. Planting gardens of vegetables and of peace to sustain us is as important a task as ever. We are each responsible for the world we leave to future generations. They will reap the harvest of our wisdom and our follies, even if we do not. What kind of world will we leave behind?

We always reap more than we sow, since we have our forefathers and mothers who have prepared the way for us. I will leave the land on which I live to future generation who will harvest the fruits of my labors. May we leave a world that continues to thrive and prosper in an abundance of reaping a harvest of joy!