[Fiction] The Parable of the Sower and the Executive

This work of fiction was originally anthologized in Hulagway: Empire & Emporia, published and launched jointly by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Ateneo de Zamboanga–Mindanao Institute on March 9, 2024, with printed copies subsequently distributed the following month.

* * *

¹ There is this story that is a favorite among priests, preachers, and gurus of these islands. It tells of a young man who ventures into the desert alone. ² His reasons are not given, but the solo journey into a desolate place signals to the listeners that this is a man intent on discovering something about himself that can only be unearthed after a long and arduous trek. ³ As he walks across the barren landscape, the young man encounters an older man tossing seeds into the dry earth.

⁴ His curiosity is aroused, and his longing for a conversation after several days on his own compels him to approach the old man and ask him what exactly he is up to.

 

⁵ “I am planting seeds,” the old man states the obvious. He follows this up with a surprising remark, “This is so one day a forest shall stand here.”

 

⁶ The young man, taken aback, glances at his surroundings. “Are you sure about what you are doing, sir? That might take an eternity.”

 

⁷ “I am certain,” said the sower confidently, still throwing seeds into the sand. ⁸ “It will take years, but I know it will happen.”

 

⁹ Dismissing the older man’s actions as an exercise of futility, the young man scoffs and takes his leave. “God be with you, sir,” he says as he makes his way to the nearest town.

 

¹⁰ Several years later, the man inherits his own business. He becomes a successful executive. He takes his car down a narrow road that had not been there in his solo traveling days and passes through a dense forest. He stops at a section of the road covered by much shade. ¹¹ As he steps out of his vehicle, he spots a solitary old man walking around with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he was the owner of the land on which all these trees stood.

 

¹² The young man senses he has seen this old man before. They exchange gazes, and the old man smiles and tells him, “Welcome to my forest.”

 

¹³ The young man then realizes this forest had been that barren landscape he had trekked through all those years ago, and this old man was the very same person whom he had dismissed as delusional for tossing seeds into earth that seemed like it would yield nothing.

 

¹⁴ The takeaways for listeners are obvious: ¹⁵ Good things take time. ¹⁶ Do not be so quick to judge others for working so tirelessly and quietly without reward; they just might have a purpose. ¹⁷ Sometimes, the most desolate moments in our lives can bloom into the most bountiful. ¹⁸ Just to name some…

 

¹⁹ But what if I told you there was another lesson waiting to be told here? What if I told you that this lesson, if we just made details a little more specific, was intended for the young man, you, the reader or listener, and others who have since embraced a so-called modern mindset? ²⁰ What if the executive was actually, in his younger days, a backpacker, and that the real reason he went on his trek was not really because he wanted to find out something about himself, but simply because he could? ²¹ While others his age toiled their days and nights away at a desk job, or in farms, factories, and seafaring vessels across the world, he had the privilege of waking up when he wished, leaving the house when he pleased, dining at the newest restaurant in town to catch up with an old friend or meet up with a potential client, and go “soul searching” when this absence of routine suddenly felt meaningless.

 

²² Suppose the “desert” he ventured into that day was not one in some distant land with searing temperatures and blinding dust storms, but more simply a quarried mountain range in the interior of a tropical island? ²³ The barren landscape, then, would be the limestone exposed from a gutted mountain, much of it shipped off to the largest island in this vast archipelago where stood a city with gleaming towers and tentacle-like roads that overlapped one another. ²⁴ And the sower whom the backpacker encountered was a local, tossing seeds into the upturned earth with the intent of replacing the vegetation that had been lost to quarrying.

 

²⁵ Indeed, the young backpacker had dismissed the older man’s efforts and went on his way—not to the next town but to the nearest barangay hall, where several habal-habal drivers waited to take anyone to the city for a meager price. ²⁶ By that evening, the young man was back in his family home in some hillside subdivision. ²⁷ He thought about that sower and the site he visited over the next few days. ²⁸ As time passed, however, his obligations in the real world eroded away his reflections. ²⁹ Life went on, and the backpacker proceeded to become the executive he was born to be. ³⁰ He made his way up the ranks of his family’s real estate and construction company to become his father’s successor.

 

³¹ The sower, on the other hand, carried on. ³² A year before he met the backpacker, he agonized as he witnessed bulldozers disembowel the mountains he explored and knew dearly as a child. ³³ The vast slopes of green from which the cries of all sorts of birds and insects emerged were easily flattened within days. ³⁴ Someone else now owned the land, he had been told, and they needed the rocks and soil within for a government coastal beautification project in some other part of the archipelago where more people lived and which thus drew more attention from the world.

 

³⁵ One night, as the man slept alone in his house, his heart still gripped by sorrow, something stirred him awake. ³⁶ At the foot of his bed stood two tall figures. They were shrouded in darkness, but their green eyes assured him they meant him no harm. ³⁷ Between them was a seedling, glimmering just enough to reveal its unusual, primeval shape. ³⁸ The sower had no idea what this plant was, but he assumed it must have been some native kind long since stripped from the earth.

 

³⁹ Plant this over the lost area, the shadowed figures told him with their eyes. From it will be born multiple seeds which you may throw over the earth. We will take care of the rest. ⁴⁰ They put him back to sleep, and the man began as instructed the following day. ⁴¹ A week later was when he encountered the young backpacker, who merely wished him all the best in his efforts.

 

⁴² When that same young man showed himself again fifteen years later, this time in handsomer clothes, and with a car on whose front door was plastered the logo of the same company he saw on those bulldozers that tore down his beloved mountain, the old man knew what those visitors from many nights ago meant.

 

⁴³ “Manong.” The young executive extended his hand in greeting.

 

⁴⁴ “Sir,” the old man said, accepting the gesture.

 

⁴⁵ “Impressive work you’ve done here,” the executive admitted.

 

⁴⁶ “Hard work and plenty of patience will do wonders, sir.”

 

⁴⁷ “That’s true.” The executive took a moment to admire all the nature around him. “It’s a good thing I bumped into you, manong, because I need to talk to someone in the area about something.”

 

⁴⁸ Suppose that, sometime in the past year, the young executive’s family business had won the government contract to widen the road in the locality? Would this not mean a good number of trees which the old man had planted would have to be cut down? ⁴⁹ And suppose that the reason why the young executive visited the area was not merely out of curiosity, but because he had a feeling he had been to this place before? He just wanted to see for himself just how different it had become since his trekking days years prior.

 

⁵⁰ “I wish to meet with your barangay captain,” he told the old man. “To discuss an important matter, one that will bring this place much prosperity and promise.”

 

⁵¹ “Our barangay captain has little power here,” replied the old man.

 

⁵² The baffled look the executive returned told the old man he did not understand what he meant.

 

⁵³ To quell the younger man’s confusion, the old man asked him to follow him. They went deep into the forest that the old man had planted. ⁵⁴ They walked a fair distance under the cool shade until they came upon a glimmering tree. ⁵⁵ It was the same seedling that had been gifted to the old man by the shadowed figures. ⁵⁶ It had grown very tall since, but it was just as mysterious and alluring as it had always been. ⁵⁷ Beneath the shade of the canopy, the tree gleamed just as it did that night it was placed at the foot of the old man’s bed.

 

⁵⁸ “It is this tree that gives permission to all those who seek to use this land,” said the old man. ⁵⁹ “Draw closer, and it just might give you what you need.”

 

⁶⁰ The young man found the old man’s statements somewhat absurd. But what harm was there in indulging a provincial’s delusions? ⁶¹ He stepped forward. With each stride, he found himself gradually captivated and comforted by the glow the tree gave off. ⁶² The way the wind blew through its branches produced a beautiful hymn that seemed to beckon him forward. ⁶³ The branches then appeared to spread out and envelop him. Instead of running away, however, or feeling so much as a hint of fear, he eagerly welcomed the tree’s embrace. ⁶⁴ A calm he had never felt before filled him. ⁶⁵ It was as though he had finally found the peace he had been seeking when he had gone on that backpacking trip to these mountains in his much younger days. ⁶⁶ He closed his eyes and never turned back.

 

⁶⁷ A day later, the executive’s father and owner of the family business called for a search of his son. ⁶⁸ Some company men knew he had gone to the mountains to conduct an ocular visit of a site they were set to build over soon. ⁶⁹ Those who searched found only the car parked along the side of the narrow road. There appeared to be no signs of struggle or foul play. ⁷⁰ They found no trace of the executive. ⁷¹ The locals said an old man who lived in the area had gone missing years ago without a trace. ⁷² Many took the disappearances to mean that these forests did not want to be disturbed, and so the endeavor was abandoned for the meantime. ⁷³ The trees that had been planted by the sower remained untouched for many years hence.