I was attending an ice cream social with some friends today and it brought back memories of one of the worst choices I ever made about ice cream. You see, I love ice cream. I love all kinds and all flavors of ice cream, but my favorite ice cream is coffee ice cream. When I was little, and my family would go to Farmer's Dairy in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for an ice cream treat, I would always get coffee ice cream. Then I would let it melt a little, stir it up until it was liquid and sip it from the bowl as I pretended it was a cup of coffee. I know... I was easily amused as a kid.
In any case, when I was a twenty-something year old, I went with a friend to Baskin Robbins and we decided in place of lunch (that was our first bad choice), we would order something called an earthquake. I don't know if they still have this on the menu but it was a huge dish of about 8 scoops of ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, nuts, whipped cream... pretty much everything they had. It was a monstrous dish and as I recall we ate the WHOLE THING! By the time we left the ice cream shoppe and walked a few stores over... I was in serious trouble. I remember begging a movie theater to let me in so I could get to the bathroom in the nick of time. I'll spare you the personal details but suffice it to say, thirty something years later... I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO EAT A WHOLE EARTHQUAKE AGAIN!!!!!
That's an example of The Law of Pinocchio. Whenever Pinocchio lied, his nose immediately grew longer. It was impossible not to understand the cause and the effect of his behavior. When we do something and suffer immediate consequences, we tend to learn our lesson and not repeat that behavior again. There's other situations that are good examples of this as well. For instance, touch a hot stove, burn your finger, and I'll bet you never try that again. Unfortunately, though most of our experiences in life don't follow The Law of Pinocchio. If they did, we'd probably learn our life lessons faster and remember them longer. Instead, most of our life lessons follow The Law of the Harvest.
Here's how The Law of the Harvest works; you plant something today, you tend it (or maybe not), and later (maybe even MUCH later), you reap what you sow. We're all familiar with this experience but that doesn't mean we give it much credence in our day to day lives. Consequently, it sure does make it hard for us as impatient, forgetful self-centered human beings to learn the things that we need to know to be successful. We tend to make our choices about careers, finances and relationships based on The Law of Pinocchio instead of the Law of the Harvest. If it feels good today, if we don't suffer consequences today or if we want instant gratification, we do what we want now... ignoring the fact that somewhere down the road we are going to reap what we have just sown... for good or bad. What about you, are following The Law of the Harvest or The Law of Pinocchio? Remember, although the grass may be greener on the other side... it still has to be mowed!
