One thing we know for sure about trees: they are stationary in one place for either decades or thousands of years and they understand a whole new meaning of Home. With deeply grounded roots their boughs are free to sway whichever way the wind blows without ever diverging from their core.
Yes we can certainly learn from the Wisdom of Trees. Trees teach us that we can indeed allow the winds of change and adventure to blow us from one place to another without ever departing from our true home, the home within our souls.
Let’s learn from Siddhartha’s author, Hermann Hesse, on the wisdom of trees.
- Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there; they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.
- A tree says: My strength is trust. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
- When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
- It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
- Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
Here’s what I learned from Hesse’s essay. Home is within me. In fact, home is me. My only task is to honor it, grow my roots deep, and appreciate the undeterminable winds of life and the God of life as they lead me in some unpredictable, yet “my own personal” direction.
So my suggestions for you are simple but powerful:
- Develop a beautiful and immovable root system composed of the real “core you.”
- Accept what life brings you—joys as well as struggles. Enjoy or manage it, for it is yours alone. No one else gets to be YOU.
- Yes, the old saying “home is where the heart is” is true, because home is where you are.
Wherever your “soul roots are, there also is serenity, excitement, pleasure, pain, struggles and joy. Those grounded with deep soul roots experience life, enlightened and fulfilled. And remember, your roots are yours alone—independent from the overwhelming noise of social pressure.
Deepen Your Roots
And Let the Winds Blow Wherever They May?
Photo courtesy of GorazdBertalanic at istockphoto
As you have already discovered this post was largely plagiarism. It’s primary messages were lifted from Hermann Hesse (from Hermann Hesse’s Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte [Trees: Reflections and Poems] discovered in Maria Popova’s Brainpickings.
