Allow me to borrow from a dying Simón Bolívar. After setting a number of colonial areas on their paths to independence, Bolivar said that America was ungovernable. (For those of you on the northern continent, yes, those on the southern one are also Americans)
Basically, Bolívar said on his deathbed that his fellow revolutionaries had merely “plowed the sea.” Like the wakes of boats, furrows won’t last long in water. The “sea” of nineteenth century South America was no place for seeds to take root and grow into the stable countries the revered revolutionary had envisioned.
Revising the makeup of a country is not an easy task when one considers how difficult it is just to revise one’s own life. We try. We plant seeds of change, and we want them to grow. Occasionally, we get a crop of change we can harvest, one that provides the sustenance we need for long term. Often, however, we plow the sea. The furrows collapse before we plant, and the seeds we do scatter fall on nothing substantial, no nourishing medium, rather merely salt water.
It’s often discouraging being one’s own revolutionary, being the one responsible for overturning an established way of life. But take some encouragement in this: Bolívar is renowned today as one whose seemingly tenuous efforts have turned into actual entities capable of acting on the world stage, if only in some minor fashion. Have his furrows produced what he envisioned? Maybe less in some instances and maybe more in others. Casting seeds in furrows is not a guarantee of a successful crop even when the furrows are cut into a medium more stable than shifting waters.
But some crop is better than no crop. Some seeds do turn into plants, and some of those plants do produce. So, even when you think you are merely plowing the sea, realize that your plowing and planting might, if not by your ostensible efforts then by a remote probability, produce a crop, possibly small, but nevertheless a crop.
Basically, Bolívar said on his deathbed that his fellow revolutionaries had merely “plowed the sea.” Like the wakes of boats, furrows won’t last long in water. The “sea” of nineteenth century South America was no place for seeds to take root and grow into the stable countries the revered revolutionary had envisioned.
Revising the makeup of a country is not an easy task when one considers how difficult it is just to revise one’s own life. We try. We plant seeds of change, and we want them to grow. Occasionally, we get a crop of change we can harvest, one that provides the sustenance we need for long term. Often, however, we plow the sea. The furrows collapse before we plant, and the seeds we do scatter fall on nothing substantial, no nourishing medium, rather merely salt water.
It’s often discouraging being one’s own revolutionary, being the one responsible for overturning an established way of life. But take some encouragement in this: Bolívar is renowned today as one whose seemingly tenuous efforts have turned into actual entities capable of acting on the world stage, if only in some minor fashion. Have his furrows produced what he envisioned? Maybe less in some instances and maybe more in others. Casting seeds in furrows is not a guarantee of a successful crop even when the furrows are cut into a medium more stable than shifting waters.
But some crop is better than no crop. Some seeds do turn into plants, and some of those plants do produce. So, even when you think you are merely plowing the sea, realize that your plowing and planting might, if not by your ostensible efforts then by a remote probability, produce a crop, possibly small, but nevertheless a crop.
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