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Look Inside The Husk

Recently I ran across an essay by Dr. Maxwell Maltz that I would like to share with all of you!

Look Inside the Husk

By Dr. Maxwell Maltz

“And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered“—Ralph Waldo Emerson

WHEN DID THESE splendid words occur to Emerson? Perhaps one day when the harvest was ready to be gathered home and the bright fields rippled in the wind, wheat for the winter’s bread. For, ages ago, wheat was thought to be a weed, quite useless to man kind.

Perhaps on that day, looking at the ripe bronze fields, Emerson was returning from a visit to his friend the teacher Bronson Alcott–that tireless, undefeatable, unquenchable man–and paused to reflect on Alcott’s stubborn insistence that it was never the “bad boy” or the dullard who was to blame but those who lacked the patience and the care to probe beneath the surface for what was good, however unpromising or unfriendly that surface might be. There were no “weeds” in Bronson Alcott’s schoolroom.

So many times, in clinic and hospital ward, have I seen the apparently hopeless misfit transformed into a hopeful and helpful person–a giver, not a taker–by the simplest display of interest and belief in him. It always makes me wonder how many good citizens, creators and builders and contributors to our common health as a nation, have been lost because someone, somewhere, was misled by the husk and did not see the golden grain within.

I suppose it comes down to this: Our first “must” for everyday should be to pause before passing judgement, remembering that the apparently useless weed in the dirt of the roadside may, with care and cultivation, provide tomorrow’s bread.

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