I was sitting on a bench in my faculty, enjoying the scenery (at least the view that was provided) and going through the status of my WhatsApp contacts. As I was skimming through, a particular caption caught my eyes. It read:

“I KILLED A PLANT BECAUSE I WATERED IT TOO MUCH”

This particular caption took me down, through the memory lane, into a time in my life when I had a plant. It was supposedly a bean plant and had been planted into a small plastic pot (agriculture, I suppose). Unfortunately for this plant, it was an experiment for a junior secondary school class (lower than mine) to understand the early life of a plant and had since then been abandoned. Now, maybe we are just brought up so that people can study us, experiment on us, perhaps to see if we can even survive in this world or even among our peers, of course, with their help. But once people see what they wanted to see or have achieved in your life, they leave us alone or rather, abandon us.

This plant was left all alone by the window side of the class. I happened to be strolling around that day (it was during closing time and my parents had arrived a bit late to pick me up) and saw the poor bean plant just sitting there. So, I did what anyone with compassion (and curiosity) would do. I took the plant and decided to take care of it until it grew much stronger to take care of itself.

In my compassion, I watered the bean plant everyday and would over-water it on Friday so that, as I had thought then, it wouldn't dry up on the weekends. During this acts, th bean plant never once complained about the treatments and seemed to be just happy that someone was taking care of it. Until…

There are people who will have compassion for you, to help you. However, they do this because they know that you will become stronger and better to take care of yourselves. But you see, at times, we are very comfortable in the season of helpless. We love it when there are people around to help us, carry us, improve us, change our lives (or theirs, maybe) but we don't realize that we are not contributing anything meaningful at all and are just stuck in our own helplessness. And if we continue to remain like that, there will be a time where those people leaves us and we will see if we were truly growing or just basking in their help and our uselessness. This is known as the True Test.

It was during the holidays that the True Test came. Because the holiday period was long (Christmas an New Year's vacation), I had to decide to either take the plant home or leave it there at school to fend for itself. It is a test for most people in our lives, where they have to decide if they have to take you along with them in their journey or just leave you to find your own journey. Now, it's not a guarantee or a must that they should. They could tell you the tricks but it is only a guarantee if you are willing to not. Besides, not everyone's journey is yours or supposed to be yours and you have to either find your own or just stand there, stuck and helpless.

In that case, the bean plant was unable to do anything by itself (plants have life but they are practically immovable) and I felt bad for leaving it at school. So, I watered it. Excessively. To the point that the plastic pot overflowed with water and kept at a small corner (where the sun could meet it) and left it there. People will feel bad for leaving you but they will give you some advice on how to grow. However, they might do it excessively and because you (might) have no way of understanding the advice, mostly because they don't give enough explanation, you could overflow with advice/knowledge, stuck in one corner and well… die.

Yes. The bean plant died. As what I was told. Actually, it had become so damp and the spot where I thought there would be sunlight, had no sunlight. So, worms took over the pot and sink deep into the plant. The plant withered and died. And because of its horrible state, it had to be thrown away.

This memory still makes me sad but it has two moral lessons. One, our hardwork will never go to waste if we have proper tools and planning to make sure that it doesn't waste. Two, people will give you advice on how to grow but they don't exactly explain the process of growth to you. Some are only around to help you at a certain point and then, leave. They are only there to see and observe and then walk away when they are done with you. And it is up to you to prove them wrong, stand on your feet, choose a direction and follow it or remain where they left you.

I had killed the plant by over-watering it. This is to tell you that though kindness is a beautiful human trait, however, if done excessively, it could drown, suffocate and kill the person it was poured onto, whether you were trying to help or out of pity.