At the suggestion of someone who knows me very well, I got off my couch this afternoon and went into the woods to regain my balance. Balance is something that has quite literally been absent from my life having been a prisoner of crutches for the last two months. To boot (see the picture below to appreciate the pun here), a string of life-changing events over the same period has further knocked me off center and there’s nothing like some couch time to really make the head spin. I, like most humans, tend to overanalyze, overthink, and generally, overdo, just about everything. Left to my own thoughts, I take myself on crazy journeys that have nothing to do with reality, instead of being present in the world as it is. So, off I hobbled to lie beneath a stand of firs to allow my muddled, jumbled thoughts to fall away, and be replaced by a quiet peace and clarity that only nature can deliver.

You see, nature doesn’t think, it just is, and its existence can provide very simple answers to some very complex questions, if you look closely. Take, for example, the stand of firs I was gazing up into—forty feet in the air, the canopy swayed in the wind soaking up the sun. As I contemplated one tree’s journey toward the light I noticed the dead branches lining the trunk at one-foot intervals all the way up. Each of those branches was once at the top, feeding the root system, but gave way each year to the growth of a new branch higher up, thanks to the strength of that very same root system. What a metaphor! While the branches were dead and no longer essential to the tree’s existence, the tree’s solid foundation would not exist had it not been for their contributions. And the boughs I saw today, dancing happily in the breeze at the top, would follow the same path and join their decaying brothers below, their usefulness achieved, as the tree continues its journey upward.

The thought of myself as a tree, constantly strengthening and growing, as trite as it sounds, brings me serenity, balance, acceptance and, perhaps most important, patience. I’ve got a lot of dead branches in my past, and each of them was imperative to my growth, and everything that is happening right now, good and bad, will contribute in invaluable ways down the road. It is this that I need to remember—if I accept everything as a challenge, a lesson, an experience that could strengthen me, rather than tear me down, then new branches will flourish in the bright light of the sun. To think otherwise, to call the journey over, is to wither and die. Nature doesn’t lie.