How Deep Are Your Roots?

How Deep Are Your Roots?

The word roots brings back a vision of the old television movie series about slavery in America. When you recall those days in the 1960s and 70s, you wonder just how far the world has come with prejudice and equal rights. We’re on the road, but a little too far from the destination for my taste.

I’m a gardener as a hobby. I have about 350 varieties of flowers and herbs in five different beds around the front of my home. Some flowers go deep into the earth, taking time to develop and create a root system that will keep them alive during the hottest months. Other flowers have short, almost veinlike roots that gather moisture from the dew. Then, others have larger roots that remain and grow larger each year. I have one moon flower that I have to dig up the roots every couple years, just because it will leech the water from the entire flowerbed.

Roots provide nourishment. A flower naturally understands when it is to bloom. If it blossoms in springtime, then it needs shallower roots, because of the vast rain. But if it is to bloom in the heat of the summer, the plant takes time to develop slowly during the spring and sinks deep into the earth to make sure it will have nourishment and water at the end of summer.

I’m always learning something about life through nature and my gardens. Natural atrophy is one of the aspects I notice most. Sometimes a flower just decides it has had enough and dies, even after a year of gorgeous growth. Other times, small seeds gather and spread to rocks and crevices. There, they grow heartily, when I know I couldn’t have possibly planned it that way.

When something dies in my garden, I recognize that there is now room for something new to grow. When some genes of flower won’t take root in my garden, I just assume it doesn’t want to be there. I don’t get bothered with forcing my garden to be exactly the way I plan it. In fact, there is a certain natural beauty about letting flowers just do their thing. I particularly love how the vines grow around the Koi pond and the rocks of the waterfall.

Deep roots require a lot of strength to dig up. Large trees have to be cut down, then the roots drilled out separately because they are so thick and deep. Humans are similar to those larger trees. As we get older, it gets much harder to transplant, trim, and change. Children, on the other hand, have an easier time with the latter. This is the reason why I look forward to twenty years from now, when the vast majority of the population will have been around long enough to abolish deeply rooted prejudices.

Sometimes I make a point of uprooting something in my life, just to make it more difficult to get set in my ways. Other times, God sends a hardy wind to blow off my roof. Either way, I get it that everything in life is ephemeral. I want to be used to change and not dig my heels in too deeply, like the pine tree in my front yard that must be sixty years old. I don’t see it moving anytime soon. But it’s sister tree, standing right next to it, died the year before last. It just withered and turned brown in a period of two weeks, as if it were struck by blight, while the remaining tree stood tall and strong.

If any of us actually knew the future and how to prepare for it, we would feel a lot safer in this world where nothing seems to have immovable roots but us humans. Today, let’s take a moment to see where we might need to wiggle our roots around a little. Maybe we could even trim away some old branches that no longer serve our entire life. I’m believing you will be the better for it.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com. FOR COMMENTS: Go to the Bo Sebastian link under the title and there is a place there to create a comment. Thanks.

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