Growing up for me was an adventure. I had and lived with parents who loved to farm. We would wake up early one morning and head straight to the farm. I can vividly remember competitions on who finished planting his long row of maize first, who was the expert at throwing a couple of corn from 4 feet and landing it in the hole with precision. I remember growing my own farm, where I had Okro that was 1 foot long. I even remember a time when I led some of my friends on a bee hunting adventure. Maybe someday we’ll get to talk about that in details.

Key point today however, is that I’ve been on a farm, I know how the feild works, and I understand the laws that govern the field. Interstingly, these laws also govern the field of life. Lets examine two.

First…

1. Sowing and Reaping. This is a very popular law, that is not very clearly understood. This singular law has as many as 10 corollaries (wow, i can remember my maths textbook).
a. This law infers that there will always be 2 seasons. A season to sow and a season to reap. (Same with life, you are either sowing or reaping, those are the two distinct elements life is made up of)
b. This law also infers that there are two categories of items, one is seed, the other harvest. (This means that what you have in your hands today is either a seed or an harvest, you can either sow or eat. In the field as in life, what you hold is either a seed or a fruit.)
c. A corollary to this law is also that like fruits in the field, every seed bears resemblance to the harvest. (Every seed gives birth to its kind. Cashew seeds don’t grow into Mangos, what we sow is what we’ll reap in bountiful folds)

The law of sowing and reaping is real. It’s the principle that grows the field, it’s the principle that has potentials to grow and change the world.

The Second

2. The law of the weeds. This is a less popular law, but it’s real as well. I remember wondering as a lad, how we spend so much energies planting maize and setting traps to protect it, while weeds grow on their own accord with no support from whereever. The law of the weed also has a few corollaries.

a. Weeds grow without help. It takes concious effort to move forward and grow things, but decay requires no assistance. Gravity as weeds favours the downward pull. Positive action must be taken to preserve the harvest, else it will be overgrown with weeds. Success requires concious consistent effort.
b. Nothing called neutral. This also shows that for the seed to grow, for success to be sure, no action is negative action. Everything counts! Weeds do not require fertilizes or wetting to grow. Every minuite of everyday, you are either moving towards or away from a fruitful field, from your goals, from success. Action or no action, it is for or against. There is no middle ground, and hence no middle ground activity. If you stand still, then the world by it’s motions will leave you behind.

Other realities you’ll learn from the field are, luck is preparation plus opportunity, and we all have opportunities. You’ll also learn, that there is no fertilizer like the farmers shadow, you’ll learn that scarecrows are real to timid souls- that the problems that seem consistent and steer us away can’t be real…you’ll learn a lot more. The field is indeed a university of some sort. Let’s call this Field101

Adeolu Akinyemi