You Say Tomatoes...

My dear friend stopped over recently with these gorgeous tomatoes from her garden.  They were so beautiful (and tasty) that I had to take a picture.  It took my family a week or more to gobble them all up, but the baskets are now empty. However, they’ll soon be filled again with vegetables and fruits from the organic co-op I joined a few years back. This is the time of year when the harvest is really flowing.                              

            I was thinking about the tomatoes this morning when I was at a yoga festival in Pennsylvania. The topic of today’s class was prosperity and abundance, and the instructors pointed out that one of the first laws of realizing prosperity is knowing that we are already prosperous.  I like to harp on this theme because I used to be prone to complaining about all the things I lack (cash being one of them!). But these days I see my life as that basket of tomatoes; full of ripe, juicy gifts.

            As I was driving home on this glorious Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the sky was bright blue, the sun was shining brightly and flocks of birds were soaring. Abundance! I thought. Prosperity!

            Then I got home and opened my email (which I hadn’t checked in four days). There were hundreds of emails (most of them junk!). “Abundance!” I looked at the bag of laundry that I’d dragged in from the car from my outing. So much of it!  “Abundance!” I checked my “to do” list for tomorrow.  “Abundance!”

            And then I thought back to the tomatoes. Abundance can go two ways. You can have too much of something you don’t really want (i.e. laundry or dirty dishes) as well as plenty of sunshine, tomatoes, and blue skies. And yet with everything that we do have (the good and the bad) why is it so tempting to focus on what we haven’t yet acquired or accomplished?

            Like everything else, I’m beginning to realize that prosperity has nothing to do with what’s outside ourselves and everything to do with our mindset and “heart-set.” I can feel rich, loved, full, satisfied, satiated and rewarded by a basket of tomatoes given to me by my beloved friend.  Tomatoes (or to-mah-tos!)…not twenties….are my riches. What are yours?