A tree can’t move from its environment. Still, it grows with beauty and grace. Its limbs reach toward the light, swaying in the breeze, and wiggling under the weight of raindrops.

Even when rooted in a cracked slab of concrete in the middle of an industrial wasteland. The tree’s not trying to prove anything. It’s just living. Expanding. Being what it is, trying to grow in the environment where it took root.

The tree doesn’t have a choice. The tree either exists where its roots are, or it doesn’t get to exist. The tree stuck in the concrete wasteland has a harder time growing. It struggles to thrive compared to its cousins who rooted in nutrient rich soil. It doesn’t complain or blame its cousins though, it just keeps growing as best it can.

The tree in the fertile soil grows larger, healthier, and faster. It outpaces the tree growing from the cracked concrete.

Sometimes we act like a tree growing in concrete. We try to grow while stuck in that cracked concrete wasteland. We forget that we don’t have to be “that tree.” We forget we have a choice to go find fertile soil. We can choose to replant ourselves into soil that matches our needs. As a result, we can grow larger, be healthier, and develop faster.

Are you rooted in the right soil?

“Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.”  Look
what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.” ― Hafiz