Planting a fruit tree?

In my yard I have a gnarled peach tree, which has only yielded a few worm-eaten peaches for the last eight growing seasons. We used to have bountiful trees, eager with springtime blossoms and sweet fruit as the summer progressed. How we used to relish the harvest!

In my yard, I have the dried twig of a plum tree whose fruit was once plentiful and sweet. Now, it is overrun with vines. It may not survive the dry summer months this year. How wonderful the taste of those plums once was!

In my youth, I once held a love that was returned with faithful and undying joy as verdant as a warm day in early June. We used to sing, "Grow old along with me… The best is yet to be."

These fruit trees, this love, were both ignorant of long cold winters, of blights and parasites. They were blind to the everyday flaws whose effects multiply over the accumulated days, until gnarled and worm-eaten, our garden was overgrown and laid to ruin.

This is the hardest article I have ever written. It requires that I reveal myself. I do so for a cause, which, I hope becomes clear by the end of this writing. You Nation of Heroes, you shining examples of what it means to be human, once again, I am inspired by your example.

Until this week, until I was moved to examine my own life following an article I read from Bangladesh, I had no idea that those blights and parasites that had ruined my garden had, in fact been the product of my own good intentions.

For most of my life, I have had my expectations and my dreams deferred. This week, as I read the news from all points on the globe, I discovered an article in bdnews24.com source that once again spoke to my very core. It was an article about a hero, whose motivation was that most human of all motivations — love.

I'm not talking about a frilly, midnight version of this emotion, but the steadfast and rock-solid love that a man experiences as a husband and as a father. It speaks to the devoted connection between two individuals, and the children who are the embodiment of the daily manifestation of that love. This father, poor, truly third-world destitute and struggling with his fate, has nevertheless given his children a treasure that more than 500,000 possession-rich children in America will never know… The confidence that their parents love each other.

Yes. 500,000 children in the United States have parents who are divorced. This statistic does not count those who live separated, but not divorced, or separated in the same household.

Like me.

This is my confession to you all. After twenty-one years, I live in a cordial household, civil and polite, even warm, but that undying warmth of June in which our children can bask is more like expensive forced-air heating on a winter day. I am baffled as to the reasons why. And I don't like to talk about it. The status of my relationship is something I don't usually publicise or confess. I do so only to illustrate that wealth comes in many forms, and our teachers and guides can come from anywhere at any time — including a rickshaw puller and would-be-entrepreneur from Narsingdi.

For those of you who missed the March 17th article last week (Giving away all just to survive, http://www.bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=13&id=190118&hb=4), it concerned a man named Yusuf, an ambitious rickshaw-puller who was working hard to build a better life for his wife and three children — he'd acquired a fleet of three rickshaws, a hut and a mango tree. In an instant, a road accident pinned his wife under a passenger carrier, caused her extensive internal bleeding, and destroyed her thigh bone. In that moment, his ambitions shifted from providing a better life for his family, to keeping his wife alive. The doctors agree that this man is doing everything he can to assure his wife's recovery. In the meantime, he sold everything.

The sum total of his entire life's savings? $720. Less than one thousand dollars was all it took to plummet this man from aspiring lower-middle class businessman to destitute father of three. For a small sum (by Western Standards). This man's life could be repaired. The article moved me. When I first read the article, my reaction was, this is the sort of news of the world that I could actually do something about.

The article confirmed what I already have come to know about your culture. Yours is a society which inculcates certain values that speak to the very basic fundamental decency that all human beings should possess. This inherent, almost instinctual morality is subordinate here in the United States, as it is in much of the developed world, to that most illusory ideal, "The Pursuit of Happiness". In the essential fruits of human existence, this man had a legacy to offer his children that many kids here in America only dream about — the opportunity to face the hard times basking in the verdant early summer light of their parents' mutual love for one another. Yusuf instantly knew what had to be done, not saving his wife wasn't even an option in his mind.

I like to think of myself as a man with uncomplicated needs. But this isn't quite true. I have always felt the need to justify my life, to live in accordance to what I believe is God's intention for me. I have always striven to be an agent of positive change in the world. So far so good, right? Wrong. Try being married to that.

Would I sell my mango tree to save my wife? Of course I would. Only, I gave it away years ago. Would I allow my family to suffer in order to alleviate the suffering of the woman I married? No question. Only, I gave too much of myself and my resources away to every passing stranger. In my relationship, I communicated, I interacted, I did everything that a good husband should do. But I wasn't contented. I felt like my life had to be important, and that I was the only one capable or willing to help anyone who asked. So every hard luck case that came along, the homeless, the down-on-their luck, were, in a metaphoric sense, they were all welcome to the fruit of my orchard. Every person with nowhere to go that lived in our house, every cause I donated too much time and too much money was the ransom for the discontent I felt in my soul that I couldn't fulfil my deeper ambitions to leave some positive mark on the world. I put the world first, and my wife second. I only really saw that after reading this article and wanting to give away the whole sum, no matter the burden to me.

My first instinct upon reading the article was the thought — "Well, things aren't so great right now for me, but they're so much worse for him, can I really refuse him the money? I mean, it would be a sacrifice, but surely I could scrape together $720."

Then I thought, "What would Yusuf do? Wouldn't he put his wife first? He didn't sell his mango tree to help a stranger. He sold it for love of his wife. This insight into being a proper husband was worth more to me than the many sessions of futile marriage counselling we suffered through years ago. It is an insight for which I intend to pay Yusuf the American sum of $200.

It is not charity. It is a professional fee. It is an amount within my means, and it is given in gratitude. The rest of the money I meant to sacrifice and scrape together should go to something for that dear old friend I still live with.

But I don't want Yusuf to be left with just my $200. Please. I want this man to be rich! I will set some prices, and I would encourage you to read Nurul Islam Hasib's wonderful article on Yusuf and Fulnahar in the March 17th edition of bdnews24.com (''Giving away all just to survive, http://www.bdnews24.com/details.php?cid=13&id=190118&hb=4) (and use the article as a lesson plan).

For those who wish to give Yusuf some "contract money" for good examples rendered, I suggest the following price structure: These prices are not Developing World Prices, but prices appropriate to the US, Canada and Europe. I have no idea how to fix prices in Bangladesh. In any case, this may feel a little tacky to you good people out there, but I assure you, putting prices on things is a very, very American thing to do, and I'm nothing if not the product of my environment. Still, I need, for my own sake, to know that there are others out there that are willing to reward the efforts of this good, good husband and father; an individual who is a better man than I am.

If you are a parent of boys, show the March 17th article to your sons. Tell them that this is how good husbands should act. Use this as a lesson. Although the example is priceless, I suggest you send Yusuf $75 for the lesson. If you can't, send what you can afford otherwise.

If you are the parent, especially the father of unmarried girls, send $100, if you can. $100 can barely make a dent in relief efforts anywhere in the world, but it represents one-fifth of what this man needs to make it back to $720. It will make all the difference in the world. What are you paying for? Well, you are putting your money where your mouth is — showing your daughters that you encourage this behaviour in a total stranger, so you would expect no less from any future husband of theirs. This behaviour is the type of conduct all women anywhere should expect in a husband. I'll tell you this much, this is exactly the kind of sacrifice I would hope any future husband would make without hesitation if they were to marry one of my three beloved daughters. May all my girls marry such a man!

If you are contemplating marriage, then this man's lesson is more valuable than anything you could ever learn at any university, especially if you are in college, pay him what one college credit costs at your school. Or, send what you can afford.

Whatever you spend on this lesson, make sure you have enough so you can spend twice as much on your loved one. I must have faith that the rest of you will be moved by this story as I was moved. I must take to heart the lesson I have learned from my reaction to this article that I need to temper my good intentions with mindfulness that charity begins at home.

But this is an invitation to you all to make the news, not just read about it.

Grandfather Little Hawk, a Native American friend of mine tells a story that his grandfather told him:

One day, when I was a boy, Grandfather sat me beside him. Suddenly, he clutched his heart and cried out, "Oh!"

"What's wrong, Grandfather?" I asked.

"There are two wolves fighting in my heart, Grandson! One is well-intentioned, kind and loving, and the other is petty, angry and selfish!"

"Which one will win, Grandfather?"

Grandfather looked at me. "The one I feed, Grandson."

In a week of bad news, disasters and melt-downs both Nuclear and Cricket, of Yunusgate and dictators firing upon their own people, we have an opportunity to give at least one news story a happy ending, we can feed the good wolf for a change. Come on, You Nation of Heroes, what are you waiting for?

I'll scrape up the rest of that money, and maybe plant a new plum tree or two. Meanwhile, I think I'll take that sweet housemate of mine whale watching. It's something she's always wanted to do. And if she tries to thank me, I'll simply tell her, "Don't thank me, thank my good teacher Yusuf for showing me how to cultivate a fruit tree."

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", is scheduled to be released by Findhorn Press in May of 2011.