I have been asked to tell you my story, to share with you the particulars of the kind of life I live, myself and those of my ilk. If you have any passing interest or even mild curiosity, I invite you to listen. Otherwise, well, I will completely understand.
You will not envy me. First, there is the fact of my name — Umberto. It is neither strong nor beautiful. It does not roll easily off the tongue or inspire awe, but catches in the throat and lands like a splat on the ears. It’s as if someone hadn’t an idea in the world what to call me — um, um — and then was convulsed by a sudden sharp cough — berto. But it is the name I have and I will have no other, so I simply have to live with it. I do understand that the meaning of my name is “famous,” but that merely adds a cruel irony on top of the disphony of my name, because I have no claim to any sort of celebrity or even notoriety.
Because, you see, I am a bean, a humble white kidney bean, Phaseolus Vulgaris. There you have me: humble, ordinary, vulgar.
My life is short, my existence constrained. I do not travel. I see nothing and know nothing of the wider world. All I know is the inside of the green pod that I share with a half dozen or so of my brothers and sisters. And my destiny? Our destiny? Our reason for being? To be eaten. We are torn from our home just as we have reached maturity, thrown into boiling water and eaten, or stuffed and sealed in a tin can later to be eaten, or set out to succumb to a slow desiccation so we may we rehydrated weeks or months or years after and be eaten.
What kind of life is that, to serve no purpose other than the benefit of another, to be nurtured only to be sacrificed, to be denied any and all greater glory?
I will tell you what kind of life that is. I have said already that you will not envy me and, doubtless, you will not. But maybe you should. My life is not about glory, but about service, not about aggrandizing my own treasures, but about putting the richness of my substance to good use, fulfilling the need of beings with whom I share this planet.
And though my life is short, while I live it is a wonder. My mother is the earth and my father the sky, and the Maker of all that is that sees me, sees me and calls me good. Is there any better reward than to be called good, to know that your unique beauty is unmatched, to be useful, appreciated, valued?
If you have listened until the end of my story, I pray that you will not envy me, but that the particular glory of your being, your humble purpose granted you for the sake of an other, your real goodness won not by achievement but vouchsafed as gift will be revealed to you, and that you too will have a story to tell.
