What Does A Tree Do When It Stops Growing?

I’d had a post started based around something that my boss said to me one day. We were at lunch, having a pretty intense conversation about life and the direction that my path is taking me. I’d been unsure about a lot things, for a lot of reasons. He knew this, and looked at me and asked quite simply,

“What does a tree do when it stops growing?”

It stopped me in my tracks. I remember giving him a weird look until it hit me. I looked up at him and said quietly, “It dies?”. He nodded. I sat back and thought about it a bit more, and it made sense to me. I knew then that I wanted to base a blog post around that because it seemed very profound to me. But I’ve been stuck.

The other day, I was scrolling through my blog feed, and came across this post from Jeff over at Every Day Power Blog. I think this says it better than anything I could possibly say. One step further, the metaphor used here is PERFECT for my life, since I’m a florist, lol.

Jeff wrote:

“We will all reach the day where we have to decide between the risk of doing what we have always done or the risk of doing something we never dreamed we were capable of. We will all have to decide between the risk of settling and playing it safe with the risk of seeing what we are truly made of.

If we look at the laws of nature along with what this quote art image is alluding to – if the flower wanted to, it could have stopped at the bud, since it  was already a foot or so out of the soil! At that point the flower could have said, “I’m Good, I need to go no further!” But that’s not what flowers do! If you look at what a flower does – regardless of where it’s planted, it will attract the necessary resources to it, with its values and beliefs..oops, I MEAN ROOTS! After it attracts the resources, it breaks the line of soil and rises to the sun. Then, after it seems to have reached it’s full height and potential, it BLOOMS! And it doesn’t just bloom once, it does year after year, after year! Season after season! Not to mention the flower will share it’s seeds of knowledge and abundance to anyone willing to pick them up!

Who knew, we could learn so much from a flower!

So! With that said! I ask: Have you bloomed? What are you waiting for you?”

Reading this was a blend of a slap across the face and a lightbulb turning on. It was almost like he’d written it directly to me. Settling and playing it safe is no longer an option for me. It’s time to make the leap, and to quote Jeff directly, see what I’m truly made of. Like the flower who decided that it needed to be more than a bud poking up into the sky, I also need to keep going, to continue growing, and find out what I’m meant to be. A lot of you already know this, but for those of you who don’t, my path is leading me away from Michigan. I’m most likely headed for Virginia by the end of the year, and Sean and I are going to go full time (or as close to full time as we can get) with SPP. I’m really excited, and really cannot wait for this change. I’ve felt like I’ve been losing myself for a long time, and this is going to give me the chance to find myself again. I couldn’t be happier.