TURNIPS

If you're not living your dream, the following story about turnips, turnip greens and pigs might help you understand why. I suppose you could say this story begins when my wife was just a little girl and I was a little boy. We were raised in totally different cultures. However, we did have one thing in common, she spent part of her summer holidays on the farm and so did I.

An American, Linda grew up in the deep south, in Alabama and I was raised in northern Ontario, Canada. You could say that fate brought us together. Shortly after we were married, we were wandering through a Super Market when Linda asked me what I would like to have for dinner. I told her I would like to have some turnip. As I picked one up and put it in our basket, she said, "What are you going to do with that?"

I replied, "I'm going to eat it."

She said, "Well, I'm not going to eat that."

I asked "Why not? I thought you liked turnip?"

"I do, but I wouldn't eat that. It's the root of the turnip... we feed that to the pigs." You know, as strange as this may seem, I had never heard it referred to as the root of the turnip! It was always just a turnip to me.

I must have looked at her rather strange when I said, "Well, what do you eat?"

"We eat the green of the turnip."

I said, "Isn't that strange, we feed the greens to the pigs."

To my knowledge, I have never eaten turnip greens. I reluctantly put the turnip back where I got it and we went on our way. But I began wondering how far back I would have to go in our family tree to find out who made the decision that we would eat the root of a turnip and feed the green to the pigs or how far back I would have to go in Linda's family to discover
who made the decision to eat the greens.

Neither Linda nor I have changed our eating habits with respect to turnip, as a result, we just don't eat turnip anymore! But every time I hear the word turnip or see one in the grocery store, I smile and it causes me to think of all the ideas that are controlling our lives that we inherited at birth.

You see, I never woke up one morning and decided which part of the turnip I would eat - I just ate what I was served. And I'm darned sure that my mother didn't wake up one morning and decide which part she would eat either. She just ate what she was served.

How much of your life is being controlled by a decision you inherited that was made by some ancient ancestor? The turnip story is true. Laugh at it if you choose, but the idea it represents is huge.