A Letter On Seeds: The Discipline of Protecting, Multiplying, and Giving From Abundance

Dear you,

I learned something today that I think you need to hear.

Never give out your seed until you have multiplied it into fruits.

And never give out your fruits until you have extracted the seed for multiplication.

I know that sounds 'Michiavellian' like.

But the more I thought about it, the less I think this is really about farming.

Imagine you have three maize seeds.

You have three chances.

You could eat them today and satisfy a present need. Or you could plant them.

Maybe all three grow. Maybe two grow. Maybe only one grows.

You don't know.

But you still have three opportunities to find out.

Now imagine that you give one away.

Nothing terrible has happened. You have simply gone from three opportunities to two.

Then you plant the first seed and it fails.

You don't know exactly why. Perhaps the soil was wrong. Perhaps you planted it too deep. Perhaps the weather was unsuitable. Perhaps you watered it incorrectly. Perhaps there was something you did not understand.

So you take what you learned and plant the second seed differently.

It fails too.

But now the failure is not exactly the same.

You have information from two attempts.

You can begin asking better questions.

What was common between both failures?

What did I misunderstand?

What should I change?

And then you look at the third seed.

That third seed is no longer just a seed.

It is another opportunity to apply everything you have learned.

That is why I think we often underestimate what we are holding.

Sometimes what looks small is actually productive capacity.

Your money can be a seed.

Your idea can be a seed.

Your knowledge can be a seed.

Your relationship can be a seed.

Your opportunity can be a seed.

Your reputation can be a seed.

Your company can be a seed.

Even your time can be a seed.

And this is where I want you to be careful.

Sometimes we give away our seed because we only see its present value.

We don't see its potential.

A seed may be worth very little if you consume it today.

But that same seed, if planted, can become a plant, produce fruit, and give you many more seeds.

So the question is not always:

“What is this worth to me right now?”

Sometimes the better question is:

“What could this become if I protect it long enough to multiply?”

There is another part of this that troubles me even more.

Imagine you give away your remaining seed, your attempts fail, and you now have nothing left to plant.

You have to borrow.

And the person you need to borrow from may have understood something you didn't.

They protected their seed.

They planted it.

They learned from their failures.

They waited.

And now they have fruit.

But fruit is different from seed.

A fruit carries many seeds.

So the person who protected their productive capacity now has abundance. They can afford to give you one seed without destroying their own ability to produce more.

Look carefully at what happened.

You gave away your seed when you had very little.

They protected theirs until it multiplied.

Now you need from them what you once had.

That is the part I cannot stop thinking about.

Sometimes dependence is created long before we realize we are dependent.

It can begin with giving away the thing that was supposed to multiply.

And I am not telling you never to give.

That is not the lesson.

There is a difference between giving from scarcity and giving from abundance.

Giving one seed when you have three is not the same thing as giving one seed when you have three thousand.

The first may be sacrifice.

The second can be generosity.

The difference is abundance.

So, please, look at what you are holding right now.

What is your seed?

Is it an idea you have not developed?

A skill you have not mastered?

Money you should be using to build productive capacity?

A relationship you should be nurturing?

Knowledge you should be converting into something useful?

An opportunity you are too impatient to develop?

A business that needs to become stronger before you start extracting everything from it?

Don't consume everything simply because you finally have something.

Protect the mechanism that created it.

When the fruit comes, don't consume the entire fruit either.

Extract the seed.

Keep enough productive capacity to begin the next cycle.

Then plant again.

Multiply again.

And again.

Because perhaps the real goal was never simply to have a fruit.

Perhaps the real goal was to become someone who owns a system that keeps producing fruits.

That is the difference between having something and having something that can reproduce itself.

So before you give something away, ask yourself one question:

Am I giving away the fruit, or am I giving away the seed that could have produced the next harvest?

That distinction may change how you handle your money, your ideas, your time, your relationships, your opportunities—and perhaps even your life.

Protect your seed.

Multiply it.

Create abundance.

Then give from the abundance.

Not from the potential that created it.