Come with me, I’d like to show you something. Don’t worry, we’re not going far, just into the front garden. If you could bring the rake and the bucket for me, I’ll wheel out the rubbish bin. Look at the front lawn. It’s all covered with yellow things like little marbles. Those are palm nuts. There are only two palm trees, but they’ve produced five huge clusters of them, and they are dropping all over the grass and even on to the driveway, where the flesh cooks in the hot Perth summer sun and bakes them on to the pavers.

 

The birds won’t eat them. The lawn mower won’t pick them up. And they are killing the grass. The only way to remove them is to rake them and scoop them into a bucket by hand. It’s a back breaking task, and I’ve done it twice a week for the past three weeks, with no end yet in sight. Individually the nuts weigh only a few grams, but by the bucketful they are a heavy load to carry.

 

As I pick up today’s crop it has got me thinking. I get calls all the time from people worrying about scarcity. They fear that they are never going to meet the right partner, or that money is going to run out. I’ve been guilty of it myself. We forget that The Universe is abundant, and demonstrates it all sorts of ways. The evidence is right in front of my eyes, in the form of these palm nuts.

 

People also despair of the state of the planet and the future of the human race. They feel powerless. How can they do anything to change it? How can they change their own lives in the face of apparently overwhelming problems? The palm nuts teach us that as individuals we may not appear to carry any weight, but put us all together and we are very significant indeed. Lots of small actions do add up to something worthwhile.

 

Life’s lessons are all around us, we just have to look. You enjoy your walk, and I’ll go on with picking up the palm nuts and counting my blessings along with each scoop I place in the bucket.