Harvesting Tomatoes--and Mindfulness

I picked my first Sungold cherry tomato yesterday. Delicious!

Popping one of these yellow-orange babies into your mouth smells like summer. This is the reason i planted those tiny seeds 5 months ago.

Every time we practice mindfulness in our daily lives, we are planting a tiny seed. Sometimes that 1/16-inch wide seed looks pathetically small compared to the avalanche of thoughts and feelings and incoming information.

We keep that seed warm by adding kind-heartedness toward ourselves, and voila! Mindfulness sprouts 2 "leaves" and for 2 seconds we leave judgments and opinions aside and simply acknowledge the present moment.

We water mindfulness daily simply by paying attention to what we are doing/saying/thinking. Five months later, that tiny tomato seed is 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide and producing a handful of tomatoes, each one filled with tiny, juicy seeds.