You want to be flexible. Not like water, which will flow around anything, but will be stopped by a simple dam, be pumped away, forced into a new path, evaporate, or simply sink into oblivion.
You want to be indomitable. Not like a rock, which is hard and strong, but once cracked, will never heal itself.
No, you want to be flexible, yet indomitable. Like a tree.
A tree will grow past any obstacles, cracking concrete, breaking through rock. It will stand against hurricanes and floods, shaking, bending, but resuming its growth once the storm passes.
And if the tree breaks, if it loses a branch or even the trunk itself, it will regrow, sprout a hundred new branches, each of which can become a true trunk in time.
Because a tree is its roots. As long as the roots are strong, the tree is strong. As long as the roots live, the tree lives.
There is a stand of aspen covering hundreds of square kilometers, millions of trunks, and yet it’s all a single individual, a single root system that has survived droughts and fires, floods and ice ages.
Because its roots are strong. The roots, those are the habits and thought patterns that keep you going. The automatic things that will shape how you view and react to the world, every second of every minute of every day.
For if you have the habit of getting up as soon as you fall, you will never stay down.
For if you have the world view that obstacles are challenges, you will never be put off.
And if you have strong, healthy, creative habits and thought patterns, you will be able to form your day, your life, and your world in a way that brings you joy and satisfaction.
Like a tree, you want to have strong roots. Like a tree, you want to have living, changing, growing habits.
Like a tree, you want to be flexible, yet indomitable.
