Today’s Mistakes Are Tomorrow’s Lessons. In this opportunity, I would like to share a short story written a few years ago. Probably one of the first pieces that came from my mind out to paper. This is quite a relatable tale that invites to reflection while entertaining you during your lunch break. Hope you enjoy it!
Mistakes come in the shape of people, situations, decisions, objects. Everything we do can have either a good or a bad outcome, but always affecting our personal life and of those closest to us in ways sometimes noticeable, sometimes invisible.
Our decisions may allow us to continue with our natural course and live plenty. Others can take us to the marvelous places we dream of. And a few ones will mark a before and after, leaving a footprint that could never be erased.
All mistakes are lessons to be learned and challenges to be overcome. Every now and then, it takes suffering, hurting, and tears to really learn a valuable lesson in life. This is exactly what happened to this young fellow.
In the hot Caribbean sun, on the island once known as Hispaniola, on the west side of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there was a young worker in a plantation. He was hungry. But he wasn’t the only one not to eat breakfast. Just one of many others working on an empty, growling stomach. These men swiped at the wheat with scythes in their right hand and a bag to put the downed wheat in the other.
It was a common plantation, for that area. With an abundant amount of this money-yielding crop, wheat and rice, throughout the land owned by the Boss.
All of a sudden, one heavy drop of water hits this young worker. He looks up and gets hailed by thousands of droplets of water, forcing him to get underneath some trees inside the Boss’ land.
“¡Vengan debajo de los árboles!” – meaning “come under the trees!” – he shouted to the rest of the workforce, dozens of young workers like himself. They promptly followed his lead going underneath the trees.
They all weren’t just hungry anymore. They couldn’t get the job done. The rain turned their day upside down. And now they had to wait days or weeks, depending on how long the storm lasted, for the wheat to dry back up, ripe for the picking, and for the Boss to pay them. They wouldn’t have enough money to supply their needs, which were basically to feed themselves.
But one of the workers looks up and notices what type of trees they were beneath. Banana trees! They were standing underneath some grub! They looked at each other, wondering if the other was thinking as mischievous as the other, considering whether they should feast on this food that was calling them to eat it.
Our young worker was a male, strong, athletic man, with agility like no one else there. He scaled up a tree like no monkey ever did before, and started to heave the bananas down and pass them like it was a banquet of bananas.
The young workforce even forgot that they were completely drenched in water while having their faces stuffed with bananas, and pieces of the fruit staying on their mouths. They utterly forgot that they wouldn’t have jobs to pay for anything. So that meal was one to celebrate because they wouldn’t get another chance to have so much food in front of them at one time.
But little did they know that they were being watched by a certain man that had given them a job. Up on a hill, in an almost mansion-like house, he sat, gazing as these ruffians devour his precious fruit. His determination to get them back at what they had done to him could be felt throughout the house.
The very next day, the young worker went out to look for a new job and overheard the other workers yelling and cursing. So he decided to hide behind the nearest object which happens to be a barrel and overhears them saying that they are going to get everybody. As they pass him without knowing he was there, the worker hears them say that they’re going to get him so he can receive his punishment for stealing from the Boss.
At once, he realizes what is going on and decides to stay there, trying not to be found by his former mates. He was hidden for almost a complete day, sored from crouching behind an empty and worn-out barrel, inside a desolate-looking alley. As he stands out of the alley, the other workers spot him and run him into the alley to beat him for hiding.
After that, they take this worker to the Boss, who isn’t reluctant to let even one person escape, to get punished. His penalty was to pay double of what he ate, and get a severe beating with a stripped tree branch; that will make him think twice about ever using hands to steal.
Just as he is limping his way home, on a rugged and overused walking path, he realizes that the worst punishment is straight ahead: the disappointment of his grandmother. Now disappointed at himself, he trudges onward until he is home. And by that time, his grandma had already heard the news.
His punishment was a severe one. Not only was his grandmother ashamed of what he had done, but she punished him very hard. He was forced to kneel on a huge grater. And he had to withstand the weight of a boulder on his head; while being whipped to an inch of life by his crying and heartbroken grandmother.
After this, he was disappointed in himself. So he vowed in a piece of paper, that he kept on him at all times, to not steal ever again.
While a cry for mercy was heard; a Boss was looking out his window, reminiscing on his own past. Remembering how he had once stolen and was punished, and how his life had changed. He was hoping that this same change would occur to this young worker, which was about to fall in his very footsteps, and learn why one should never steal.
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