Weed as we all know it refers to an unwanted plant, mainly in large amounts and mostly on the fields or if you like farm. Personally I thought weed only grew naturally and is only, for lack of a better word, an unidentified plant and always useless. But I learned in high school or I should say, I was thought in high school, even useful plants could be weed. It sounds absurd at first but take a deep breath and think of it, it is true.

Let us bring it into context shall we, say you labor all of the planting season to sow corn, you tilt the land and do all that digging and nurturing until the rains come. You frequently clear the farm and when it is time to harvest, the maize grows alright but there’s also traces of okra, yeah, you may need okra as well but you surely didn’t plant okra and the quantity or should I say quality of what has germinated in the name of okra plant is nothing to write home about, in that instance, the okra plant though not originally a weed, becomes weed. I hope you get my point?  If you don’t, please start again, because this is just the premise for the piece, a very short one though. : )

When we journey through this world, our lives play out just like the farm produce fore mentioned, we all have that target or if you like purpose in life and while we want to keep our minds on that maize, we usually get beans being brought our way and more often than not, try to harvest both.

Take for instance, Mr. Van, born in the pride of a great homeland, he, from infancy had a single passion, to be an engineer. It’s a great dream, no? unless of course you are one Sheldon Cooper you will admire his ambition and hope and pray, if you believe in the power of thee supernatural that he will achieve that and by his talent make the human race better.

In his part of the world though, one cannot take a single field of science for focus, to prevent being handicapped when you lose interest in what you are reading, students are mandated to take at least two majors and only focus on the one they are sure of in their final year of study.

And so it came to pass that Van, being an intelligent student, aced at both physics and biology; which he choose as a second major. Of course when the time came to make a choice he followed his heart and concentrated on his physics lessons. When he was furthering his engineering dream however, a door opened for him to work in a biology research unit. However it was only for a few years and he won’t be allowed to study alongside. He was very intelligent and could pursue the field he left a few years back and be paid a house-full of money but he could also ignore the offer and continue his studies in engineering.

I love to stop the story here, though spellbinding if you ask me, it has exhausted its purpose. In the two decades I have lived, I have come across different people that plant “maize” in their lives such as Van’s engineering dream. However in the course of their lives they encounter “beans” in their fields like the biology research offer did to the young Van. He could of course just have paused his education and go for the seemingly lucrative offer and return to his dream field after but let’s not probe the pros and cons of that, lest we taint the point of this write up.

Manasseh, a young journalist in Ghana was telling his story at a seminar I attended said he was offered a ‘better’ deal with a different media house where he was, I like to think of that as the ‘ ‘beans’ of course he will be  doing the same thing he is doing at the current place so why not go there or share time and earn more, no because the ‘maize’ he planted needs focus and trying to harvest both will just mean allowing that weed to battle with your precious plant for minerals or if you like nutrients.