You Reap What You Sow

Anyone NOT heard of the phrase “you reap what you sow”? It exists in various different forms in different cultures — Buddhism and Hinduism call it karma, Justin Timberlake wrote the song What Goes Around, which remains in my personal favourites folder on Spotify, and the old English folks called it tit-for-tat.

However, very often, we don’t really reap exactly what we sow, do we? Sometimes, we reap way more than we sow.

I don’t know if you’ve realized it but anything good you do in the world comes back to you ten-fold. The universe doesn’t like debt. Ever fed a stray dog with kibbles you keep in your car? Realise how warm your heart feels? That’s your “reaping” right there, not the lottery ticket you bought with 4786 which didn’t even come out as one of the consolation prizes.

There is a whole other angle to this “reap what you sow” narrative though.

When you eat a slice of cake, you’re happy, your taste buds are having a concert, but while that cake lasts for maybe half an hour, your waist circumference seems to grow immediately, and THAT lasts for a good 5 days… that too, if you don’t have another slice of cake in the same amount of time.

Some truth to “once on your lips, forever on your hips” perhaps?

You can zumba for an hour, do a hundred stomach crunches, burpees and bicep curls, and traces of that cake would still be found in all that visceral fat the Internet keeps talking about!

There is one other instance where the principle of reaping what you sow is completely disproportionate though, and that’s sex.

It is so easy to have sex, especially in today’s dating culture. Throw in teens, absent parents, youthful hormones, and a lack of awareness about protection into the mixture, and what we have are teen moms who never signed up for a baby. Carrying that baby for nine months is already a huge imbalance to five minutes of pleasure, but caring for that new life she brought into the world for the next 21 years?

This is as far away from “reap what you sow” as you can get.

While children can be seen as a blessing, never forget that children are first and foremost, your biggest responsibility. And that responsibility shouldn’t be thrust into anyone’s hands without them first understanding the whole premise of parenthood and the effort that goes into keeping a child alive for a couple of decades.

It shouldn’t be so easy to bring a child into the world, and so hard to keep at it for a lifetime. This one definitely makes me question the universe’s sense of humour.