Finding Value In Tomatoes and Big Dreams

I picked a tomato today, off a plant on my patio.

It was beautiful. Full and round and ripe red.

One tomato. An Early Girl. I don’t really have a yard to plant it in, so it’s still in the pot that it came in from Costco. It came with an attached tomato cage. There are about thirty little baby tomatoes of varying sizes. A couple the size of the head of a Q-tip. A couple already getting a blush of red. And everything in between.

The plant cost me $12.95, so if I don’t manage to keep the plant alive, it was the most expensive one tomato ever. The wind has knocked it over twice. It’s taken me some time to figure out the whole watering-a-tomato thing.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my $12.95 tomato plant alive long enough to get any more tomatoes. I’m sure going to try. But in the meantime, the one tasted amazing on fish tacos for dinner though.

On the other hand, my dog ate my radish plants right out of their pots — including the roots that were nearly ready to harvest. Not much money invested there, but I did spend three weeks watering and watching over those seedlings.

I really wanted to eat them!

(Did you know that Gidget’s favorite sandwich was peanut butter and radishes?)

I’m sorry my radishes didn’t make it into my own peanut butter sandwich, but I’m not sorry I grew them.

Here’s the thing: Growing something is fun. It’s satisfying. It feels good. It has merit all its own, even if it doesn’t make financial sense and you risk taking a loss.

I think that dreaming is the same. There is merit in dreaming big, even if it doesn’t work out and things don’t turn out the way you want them to.

Dreaming big has value beyond anything that might come from it. It has value all on it’s own.

Don’t be afraid to dream — as big and wild as you can.

What comes from it is something else entirely.

Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She lives in Reno with her husband, three superstar kids, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.