meet my neighbor

have i introduced you guys to one my neighbors here in florida, yet? no? okay, here you go; meet abu falah, a name i gave him because of his extensive acumen at growing plants, and trust me, he grows a lot of plants. most of which are grown just because. some will bloom for just one day, one day, and that’s it, to bloom again a year after. some flaunt their petals for 7 days or less, and that’s it. and yet, abu falah tends to them every day tirelessly. they provide no benefit to him, in fact, of the hundreds of plants in his garden, the only plants he grows that has nutritional benefits are garlic, which by the way, also helps to get rid of some bugs from the flowers, eggplants, and one or two pineapples, you know, that fruit that happens to take 3 to 4 years for it to mature; why not, abu falah, why not, why not tend to something that can be devoured in one sitting for 4 years, why not.

i named him abu falah because falah, despite its popular translation to ‘success’, actually, classically means ‘to harvest’. so that falah is said of the farmer when he is harvesting his plant, and because he became so successful that he is able to harvest, falah came to be translated merely as ‘success’. but what is missing in that translation is the lack of context and expense by which the success came by. to be falah, is to note the daily labor that goes into nurturing these plants. there are dozens of plants that abu falah would tell me that of the dozens of seeds he planted, only this one made it, and one of such plant was the one that blooms just for one day. the passion! talking of passion, i told him one day about what passion means, that it is derived from the latin word ‘pati’ which means ‘to suffer’, and so anyone that suffers for something is said to be passionate.

it is this ‘passion’ that’s missing when falah is merely translated to ‘success’, so that people seeking ‘success’ today don’t expect to suffer. they think of suffering as alien to their goal of success, instead of expecting to actually suffer, labor, be passionate, daily, without despair, without fear, filled with hope, filled with life, love, calm and peace; here, that’s abu falah, abu means father, so there you go, the father of falah, my neighbor, he just found his latest obsession, moringa! ha! those green pearls.