A Key Lesson From Eating An Orange

Night had fallen and I was out taking a stroll. I had been home all day, working on a project and I needed to stretch my legs a bit — get out of the house a little and get some fresh air. Plus the weather outside was inviting, a humidity-free 80ish degree temps on a Summer night.

After a while, I thought, ‘it will be nice to drain an orange — it will aid the digestion of my dinner, and it’s a good reason to walk over to the shop to get it. So I walked down Jerome Avenue and bought 3 of them — good old yellow oranges. Not having a knife, I dug into it’s rind with my nails and split it. With the covering off, I started taking out the pieces one at a time.

But anytime I chewed down on one piece, just like I had learned all my life, I sucked out the juice and spat out the seed, and then chewed down the roughage.

Then, I thought about what I had just done. What will happen to this seed, I asked myself? I spit out the seed? Why? Where? On the land that I was standing on — the patch of green grass I was standing next to. If the seed finds good soil and gets enough water and sunlight, it will sprout into an orange tree.

And then it hit me: you never eat the seed, your seed, but you sow it into the ground you are standing on, your ground.

Take another look: When you get the reward of your work — paycheck — which is yours to enjoy, the first thing to do is enjoy a portion of it and then take out the ‘seed part’ and sow it into your “land,” your ground, your life.

And when you sow, you don’t just cast it anywhere, like I did by spitting the orange seed into the green grass, which is not my land and a place where I will never find it again. But instead, I should dig a little (If I have a backyard) of my own land and sow it into it, water it, dung it, and give it 10 years from now to produce.

(Funny enough, in the startup world, the founder of an idea should commit at least 10 years to his idea to see it fully bloom — read Sam Altman’s much shared article ‘Startup advice, briefly.” Sam is the president of Y Combinator and has seen countless startups come through their doors — including Stripe, Teespring, Airbnb, and others.)

So in 10 years, I will not have to take out money to ever buy an orange again. Why? Because I will then have my own tree.

Think of how many of us waste our ‘seed part’ our income by spitting it our carelessly week in week out. How many of us cast it into someone else’s land — someone else’s company— every day, never to find it.

But in 10 years we still take out money and give it someone else to buy ‘oranges’ — a job, for food, expenses — when in the past 10 years, with a little thought, care, and planning — by starting our own project and nurturing it, watering it, and gathering people around it — we could be sitting under our own tree and enjoying the fruits and the shade it provides.