The Heart of Endurance

Tag: garden

  • Life as a soil

    For much of life, we pay attention to what is growing above the ground.

    Our career.

    Our accomplishments.

    Our skills.

    Our income.

    Our reputation.

    The projects we complete and the things we create.

    We look at the size of the tree and ask:

    Is it growing fast enough?

    Is it producing enough fruit?

    Could it become even larger?

    This is natural during the building years of life. We need to cultivate abilities, create financial security, support our families, and contribute to the world.

    But recently I have begun thinking about life differently.

    Perhaps the most important part of the garden is not the largest tree.

    It is the soil.

    The soil is what makes growth possible.

    What is the soil of a human life?

    For me, it includes faith and my relationship with God.

    Family relationships that genuinely grow together.

    Solitude.

    Rest.

    Physical and emotional health.

    Inner character and values.

    These things may not be our most visible accomplishments. They rarely appear on a résumé. Yet everything else grows from them.

    For much of our achievement-oriented lives, however, we often do exactly the opposite of what a good gardener would do.

    We sacrifice sleep for work.

    We replace solitude with meetings.

    We give family time to professional opportunities.

    We sacrifice health for productivity.

    In other words:

    We deplete the soil to make one plant grow faster.

    And it often works.

    The professional tree becomes larger.

    Its branches spread.

    It produces impressive fruit.

    People admire it.

    But eventually we may discover that the soil underneath has become exhausted.

    Perhaps the second half of life asks us to reverse the priority.

    Take care of the soil first.

    Then look around the garden.

    There may already be mature trees.

    Professional knowledge.

    Skills developed over decades.

    Physical capabilities.

    Wisdom gained through experience.

    These trees do not need to be cut down simply because they are no longer growing rapidly.

    Let them stand.

    They may continue producing fruit and providing shade for others without requiring constant attention.

    Then there are smaller plants and flowers.

    Friendships.

    Interests.

    Travel.

    Conversations.

    Unexpected opportunities.

    Beautiful experiences.

    Some may remain for decades.

    Others may bloom for only one season.

    That does not make them less valuable.

    Perhaps friendship is especially like this.

    Receive friendship when it grows.

    Cultivate it when it is alive.

    Appreciate its fruit.

    But do not require every friendship to remain unchanged forever.

    A flower does not need to become a permanent tree in order to have been beautiful.

    And some ground should remain empty.

    We do not need to plant every available space.

    Solitude.

    Rest.

    Uncertainty.

    Things not yet discovered.

    These empty places are not wasted land.

    They allow the garden to breathe.

    Perhaps this is what an integrated life looks like.

    Care for the soil.

    Let the mature trees stand.

    Plant new seeds.

    Enjoy the flowers while they bloom.

    Don’t force every plant to become permanent.

    Leave some ground empty.

    Notice what grows.

    For years, I thought the gardener’s responsibility was to produce the biggest and most fruitful tree possible.

    Now I am beginning to understand something different.

    A gardener’s first responsibility is not to the biggest tree.

    It is to the soil from which the whole garden lives.

    Perhaps when the soil is rich, we do not need to control everything that grows from it.

    We can cultivate what needs our care, receive what appears unexpectedly, and simply enjoy walking through the garden while it is here.

  • 77: You Can Choose the Soil

    For much of life, we do not get to choose the soil in which we grow.

    We are like young plants.

    We are placed somewhere, and we have to survive.

    If the soil is poor, we send our roots farther.

    If there are rocks, we grow around them.

    If sunlight is limited, we stretch toward whatever light we can find.

    We adapt.

    This is especially true during the building years of life.

    We need education.

    We need work.

    We need income.

    We need opportunities.

    We have people who depend on us.

    Sometimes we remain in difficult environments not because they are ideal, but because they provide something we need.

    And so we develop an important question:

    How can I survive and grow in this soil?

    That question can make us remarkably strong.

    We learn.

    We work harder.

    We become useful.

    We adapt to different people and cultures.

    We develop skills that allow us to survive conditions we once thought impossible.

    There is dignity in this kind of persistence.

    But perhaps there comes another season.

    Over many years, we accumulate something.

    Experience.

    Skills.

    Relationships.

    Financial foundation.

    Wisdom.

    Other interests and sources of meaning.

    Gradually, without realizing it, something fundamental changes.

    We are no longer only the plant.

    We have become the gardener.

    And the gardener can ask a different question.

    Not:

    How do I survive this soil?

    But:

    Is this where I want to keep growing?

    That is a very different question.

    And perhaps that is one of the deepest forms of freedom.

    Freedom does not mean finding a life without difficulty.

    Every meaningful garden has difficult seasons.

    There will be poor weather.

    There will be weeds.

    There will be plants that fail.

    There will be work we do not enjoy.

    Freedom does not mean constantly moving whenever something becomes uncomfortable.

    It means something deeper.

    I no longer need to remain in soil that repeatedly requires me to become less myself simply because I am capable of surviving there.

    For years, we may take pride in our ability to tolerate difficult environments.

    I can handle this.

    I can adapt.

    I can work harder.

    I can survive.

    And perhaps we can.

    But eventually another question becomes more important:

    Just because I can survive here, why must I spend my remaining life here?

    The answer may once have been necessity.

    Perhaps now it is not.

    This realization changes how we look at the larger garden.

    There may be other soil around us.

    Work that feels meaningful in a different way.

    Some areas may already contain small plants we barely noticed because all our attention was directed toward surviving in one difficult field.

    We do not need to immediately abandon the old garden.

    Nor do we need to find perfect soil somewhere else.

    Perhaps we simply begin paying attention.

    Where do I feel alive?

    Where can I be fully myself?

    Where does my energy naturally want to go?

    Where can what I have learned become useful without consuming who I am?

    For much of life, strength may mean learning how to grow wherever we are planted.

    But perhaps mature freedom brings another possibility.

    We can appreciate the roots that made us strong.

    We can be grateful for difficult soil that taught us how to survive.

    And then, one day, we can look across the wider landscape and realize:

    I am no longer only the plant.

    I am the gardener now.

    And I can choose where to plant the life I still have to give.

  • 74: The Tree Is Not the Entire Garden

    For much of my life, I cultivated one field.

    I planted carefully.

    I worked the soil.

    I watered consistently.

    I removed weeds.

    When the weather became difficult, I protected what I had planted.

    When growth was slow, I worked harder.

    Gradually, one tree became larger.

    Its roots grew deeper. Its branches spread. It began producing fruit.

    For many years, much of my attention was focused on that tree.

    How can I make it stronger?

    How can I help it grow?

    How can I produce more fruit?

    This is how many of us build the first half of life.

    The tree may be a career, a business, a profession, or another major pursuit. We invest enormous amounts of time and energy into it.

    There is nothing wrong with this.

    A large tree does not grow accidentally.

    It requires years of discipline, patience, failure, learning, and persistence.

    But eventually, something changes.

    The tree becomes mature.

    Perhaps it no longer needs constant attention.

    Perhaps circumstances make further growth difficult.

    Or perhaps we simply begin noticing something that was there all along:

    The tree is not the entire garden.

    There is land beyond it.

    For years, the large tree may have occupied so much of our attention that we barely noticed the surrounding space.

    But when we finally step away from its shade, we discover other possibilities.

    Perhaps these were always present as small plants or unopened seeds.

    Now there is room to notice them.

    Our first instinct may be to approach the new garden exactly as we approached the old tree.

    Plant quickly.

    Work harder.

    Measure growth.

    Increase productivity.

    Turn every seed into another project.

    But perhaps the second half of life asks for a different kind of gardening.

    Not every plant needs to grow faster.

    Not every flower needs to produce fruit.

    Not every empty piece of land needs to be planted.

    Some plants need water.

    Some need pruning.

    Some need to be left alone.

    Some may bloom beautifully for one season and disappear.

    And some seeds may become trees we will never live long enough to see fully mature.

    The gardener’s task is not to force everything to grow.

    It is to pay attention.

    To prepare the soil.

    To notice what is emerging.

    To respond when care is needed.

    And sometimes simply to sit in the garden and enjoy what is already there.

    Perhaps this is the transition from expansion to integration.

    Expansion asks:

    How can I make this tree bigger?

    Integration asks:

    What else is growing in this garden?

    The old tree does not need to be cut down.

    It deserves gratitude.

    Its roots contain decades of experience. Its branches may still provide shade. Its fruit may continue helping others. Everything learned while cultivating it—patience, judgment, resilience, discipline—can now be carried into the wider garden.

    It simply no longer needs to be the garden.

    Perhaps that is one of the freedoms of the second half of life.

    We stop trying to force more growth from the one tree that has defined us.

    We begin walking around the land.

    We plant a few seeds.

    We leave some spaces empty.

    We watch.

    We receive.

    And gradually, we discover that a rich life was never meant to contain only one magnificent tree.

    Perhaps the deepest joy is not producing the largest tree at all.

    Perhaps it is finally learning how to live inside the whole garden.