A Story of 24 Little 'Hopes' Encountered on a Night of Despair

In the quiet of my room at night, I was left speechless.

I had been raising my Haworthia with such care, truly with such care. It was the only precious cluster, a miracle born from crossing 'Ice Sugar' and 'Kyo no Hana'. Seeing that it had colored up quite a bit, I reached out to cover it with a tea bag to prevent the seeds from spilling, and that was the very moment it happened.

My fingertips brushed against the flower bud, just ever so slightly.

In the next instant, the only cluster I had fell off, silently.

"What have I done..."

My mind went blank, and I was crushed by a deep despair, as if all my joy had vanished in an instant. All the time I had spent, all the expectations I had held, had been reduced to nothing by a single moment of clumsiness. That was how I felt I had to interpret it.

However, the story did not end there.

The fallen cluster was inside the pot of another Haworthia nearby. With a feeling of not wanting to give up, I retrieved the small cluster, thinking it was a long shot, and stared at it intently in the palm of my hand.

And then, to my surprise, wasn't the tip of the cluster opening up just a little bit on its own?

Perhaps it was ripe. With a prayer in my heart, I gripped my tweezers and carefully, so carefully, opened the cluster.

What appeared from inside were 24 small, yet strong, black seeds.

I was moved. My heart felt warm.

That cluster didn't fall because of my mistake. It fell at that very moment because it had fully ripened and was ready to pass the baton of life to the next generation.

That is how I decided to interpret it.

If you look only at the surface of things, it might be a 'failure' or an 'accident'. But when you take a step further and look at the life processes behind it, it transforms from despair into a 'miracle' that arrived at the perfect moment.

Actually, I hadn't prepared for sowing the seeds at all. Now, I am frantically looking up information online, carefully wrapping the seeds in Kimwipes (since I was out of kitchen paper), putting them in a freezer bag with a desiccant, and storing them in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator.

I have to rush to get everything ready for sowing in a week.

My to-do list has suddenly grown. There is also so much I need to research.

But think about it. Isn't this time spent researching with excitement for the future, this time spent busy with preparations, the most fun of all?

There is nothing in life that is a waste. Especially when you feel like giving up due to an accident right in front of you, turn it into energy for the future. Enjoy this very moment with all your might.

In one week, I will sow these 24 hopes into the future.

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