This morning I went to Wallymart and was looking at the plants in the garden dept. There was a small section in one corner, of vegetable plants no one had bought and taken home and transplanted. The spring rush to buy and transplant is mainly over down here.

There were cilantro plants spindly and dwarfed by malnourishment, blooming and on the verge of dying. Not the lush verdant plant it could have been.
Tomato plants and bell pepper plants squashed together on stacked open shelves. One tomato plant with a thick stem had lain sideways and twisted up so it's top could catch a little sun. There were three small green tomatoes on it.
A bell pepper plant doing its best to grow in awful circumstances had two ping pong sized bell peppers on it. Filaments of roots pushed from every opening in its pot, searching for soil and finding none.
(I felt sorry for those plants who wanted to grow and couldn't.)

But right there I had an epiphany, if you will. The philosopher's questions: Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? became clear as I looked at those struggling plants trying to do what their inherent nature, their DNA programmed them to do.
The plants struggle to reproduce by uncomprehensible instinct, because if they can produce fruit, and one seed follows them to reproduce itself, the Prime Directive has been met.


The Prime Directive, of everything from amoeba to human beings is this: To reproduce itself and die, and each succeeding generation must, by this blind imperative, follow suit.

That's the enlightenment I found today.

susil