Conversation with the Rain Child

"What are you doing, little rain-child?"
"Scattering raindrops. Look, it's a misty light shower down on earth now."
"Ay, child. The farmer must be delighted."
"Alas, no. Look."
"Indeed! Why is he frowning so, why does his family look so miserable? "
"Because he believes the drizzle to be a thunderstorm, and tells them that it will destroy his crops, for they are too weak to withstand the shower."
"Too weak! But have they not ploughed the plantation and made the soil loose and moist, and do all they could to make the crops grow?"
"That is what I mean. The crops will survive, for they are a product of hard work, and the rain will let them grow strong and healthy. Yet the farmer sees them small and yellowed, and cries for the sun, for his cousin on the sunny offshore island have green, leafy plantations bigger and stronger than his is now."
"His cousin has had that plantation for years, longer than he..."
"I begged the sun child to send his rays upon the farmer's crops, too, for I cannot bear to see them sad, but the sun child says no, he cannot."
"Indeed he cannot, my child, and you know why. The crops must learn to withstand the occasional rains to emerge stronger than ever, and to grow. Should the farmer have sun all day, his crops will never be as hardy..."
"The sun child says, give him a year or more, for if he were to give the young farmer all the sun he could have now, everytime he expects it, his family will cease to work hard... but I can't help feeling sad, still."
"Why, child?"
"He has no faith in the work he had put in, that his family has put in, how the rain has moistened the soil, how their ploughing and fertilising had made the soil rich, and all it takes is just consistent work to make them grow well... He does not see that with each year, the volume of his harvest grows, but laments the weaker crops that wither in the process, the waste, and blames his family and himself for the negligence that brings about the wasted percentage..."
"Yet it is not possible, a full harvest. There will be some crops who will never make it..."
"Alas, how true..."
"Have faith in them, little one. The next harvest will be a better one."
"I do have faith in them. Always have. I can only wish that they could have a little more faith in themselves, too."

© CharmY 2006