Blooming Where You're Planted
I was down at Lake Hope State Park in the southeast of Ohio this weekend and took a little nature walk by myself. After working my way down a very steep hill (either erosion has gotten worse or I'm getting older), I stopped at a wash where there was a nicely positioned fallen tree, and I sat down and admired the area.
There wasn't anything particularly special about this area of the woods. Sure there was a view of the lake off to my west through an opening in the trees created by the dry wash I was in. Looking back east, up the steep hill, it was plain to see that this was just one of many areas in these hills where the water chose to run together on its way down the hill to the lake. Around me were trees: tall and short, young and old. There were also bushes and saplings and the usual stuff one sees in the woods.
Flanking me on either side as I sat were two small bushes or trees. They were sitting right in the wash and surely must feel the force of water running down the hill to the lake. I am not a naturist, so I can't tell you what kind of bushes or trees they might be. As you can tell, I'm not even sure if they are saplings or bushes; they had, to my untrained eye, characteristics of each.
My first thought was that they were in a precarious place and probably would not survive a strong rain. And when compared to their strong, stout neighbors reaching as much as a hundred feet into the air (or so it seemed from my vantage point), they were unremarkable in this forest of tall trees with plumb line straight trunks.
After a bit, I came to realize that those trees and my little bushes had no say in where they were. Obviously, they cannot pick up and move to safer ground. They are, by their very nature, stuck where their seeds lodged and took root. They bloom where they bloom, where they were planted by fate or providence or the hand of man or animal.
I was sitting there making jokes to myself, telling my little bush/saplings that they had chosen poorly and would never be as tall or strong as their neighbors. There are lots of judgments in those sentiments.
Nothing in that forest around me chose to be where it was anymore than I chose to be born. They bloomed where they were planted. They will live as long as they can. And they will die either remarkably or casually.
I have always liked to believe that I have had choices in my life: where to live, what to do, who to do it with, when to do it, and even to do nothing. But I wonder how much choice I have really had in my life and how much of it was me blooming where I was planted and surviving as best I could.
I always thought of that aphorism "bloom where you are planted" as meaning that one should strive from where they are to better themselves. Now, I have room in that saying for accepting that not everyone is a mighty oak; some are small shrubs or scraggly sapplings. No matter how much a shrub may want to be an oak, it will always remain what it is: a shrub.
Analogy is slippery, and I can already pick the holes in mine. Still, we are life. We are what we are. Time and chance happen to us all.
There wasn't anything particularly special about this area of the woods. Sure there was a view of the lake off to my west through an opening in the trees created by the dry wash I was in. Looking back east, up the steep hill, it was plain to see that this was just one of many areas in these hills where the water chose to run together on its way down the hill to the lake. Around me were trees: tall and short, young and old. There were also bushes and saplings and the usual stuff one sees in the woods.
Flanking me on either side as I sat were two small bushes or trees. They were sitting right in the wash and surely must feel the force of water running down the hill to the lake. I am not a naturist, so I can't tell you what kind of bushes or trees they might be. As you can tell, I'm not even sure if they are saplings or bushes; they had, to my untrained eye, characteristics of each.
My first thought was that they were in a precarious place and probably would not survive a strong rain. And when compared to their strong, stout neighbors reaching as much as a hundred feet into the air (or so it seemed from my vantage point), they were unremarkable in this forest of tall trees with plumb line straight trunks.
After a bit, I came to realize that those trees and my little bushes had no say in where they were. Obviously, they cannot pick up and move to safer ground. They are, by their very nature, stuck where their seeds lodged and took root. They bloom where they bloom, where they were planted by fate or providence or the hand of man or animal.
I was sitting there making jokes to myself, telling my little bush/saplings that they had chosen poorly and would never be as tall or strong as their neighbors. There are lots of judgments in those sentiments.
Nothing in that forest around me chose to be where it was anymore than I chose to be born. They bloomed where they were planted. They will live as long as they can. And they will die either remarkably or casually.
I have always liked to believe that I have had choices in my life: where to live, what to do, who to do it with, when to do it, and even to do nothing. But I wonder how much choice I have really had in my life and how much of it was me blooming where I was planted and surviving as best I could.
I always thought of that aphorism "bloom where you are planted" as meaning that one should strive from where they are to better themselves. Now, I have room in that saying for accepting that not everyone is a mighty oak; some are small shrubs or scraggly sapplings. No matter how much a shrub may want to be an oak, it will always remain what it is: a shrub.
Analogy is slippery, and I can already pick the holes in mine. Still, we are life. We are what we are. Time and chance happen to us all.
posted by Tom | 12:06 PM
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