It was about two handfuls of sunflower seeds. I put them in my pocket and scattered them while taking a walk. It had rained the day before and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. With a somewhat tacky illusion, tempered only by what happens in the land of sunflowers, I imagined a flowery trail where I had passed. If we're going to dream...
About two months later I had already accepted the total failure of the idea. Not a single sunflower plant. It was then that I was surprised by the shape of two tabobos. As I approached, I saw that they were two sunflowers about to bloom. Since then I visited them daily. I wanted to see the flower on the same day it opened, as I was afraid that someone would see it first and take it home for their private enjoyment.
A few days later I saw a leaflet lying on the ground. It was a publication by AHOF, the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the University of Murcia about the feeding of milk goats. I assumed that a shepherd with his flock had passed by there. I had already given up the sunflowers for lost, but then I saw that they were still there without a single bite. They were about to bloom. On the way home I remembered the leaflet and, reading it over, a phrase stopped me in my tracks: "Kids sacrificed at about one month of age are a by-product of milk production."
I went the next day, convinced that the flowers would already be open. But I only found a leafless stem with a flower torn off on the ground. It was half open, with the yellow petals visible, but still closed. I picked it up and took it home for my private suffering. It looked like the goats had eaten the sunflowers. Good food.
I tell this story because some of the most important lessons that life gives us are found in the small and unimportant. Planet Earth and Lanzarote are like those sunflowers: practically nothing in the middle of the immensity of the cosmos, but a miracle of life and beauty. Who would have thought that in mid-June in Lanzarote, without a single drop of irrigation and in the municipality of Arrecife, two sunflowers were about to bloom? Sometimes, blinded by cynicism, we underestimate this land.
Then I connected the dots: Lanzarote is the goat, the kid is our future, and tourism is the milk.