Look To The Trees

At the summer camp I work at, we tell children, as the glow of the fire illuminates their faces, to walk tall and look to the trees to guide you. Today I was feeling rather sad. I had been trying to become a new person, yet I continually made mistakes, and I continually fell, and I was starting to give up on the world. I decided to go for a walk. I walked and I walked and I walked until I couldn’t feel my legs, and my lungs were sore from the air, and my hands and arms were blushed from the harsh whip of the winter wind. And as I walked, I began to think about the trees. I slowed my pace, and I cleared my mind and I looked to the trees to guide me. I searched into all of the trees, in the hopes that I could find an answer to my dilemma.

And I did.

As I looked to the trees, I found that each tree is unique, and special, and different. No two trees are the same. They may have the same flower, they may be the same height, but they are not the same. No two trees have the same number of leaves, or the same number of budding flowers, or the same number of twigs that reach out into the sky. The things that make a tree into a tree, is also what makes each tree so different and special.

I looked across the road and I saw two trees standing side by side. These trees were roughly the same height, but they could not have been more different. The first tree was filled to the brim with pine needles and leaves and branches, and life. The second tree was bare to the bone, consisting only of the smallest twigs that held on in the hopes of something better. The first tree drew my eye, but the second tree drew my attention. The second tree was ugly. The second tree had none of the qualities of a beautiful tree. The first tree was for more superior.

But then I thought back to those summer days. I thought about the trees, and how the sun beat down on them, and how the fresh raindrops of a stormy summer night still slid down the leaves and made them glisten. And these trees were beautiful. When they were given the right opportunity and when they were in the correct moment, those trees began to shine.

My second tree had the potential to be the most beautiful tree in the world. But the moment wasn’t right. This tree wasn’t meant to withstand the hardships of gray skies and winter winds. But this tree was still there. This tree was still standing strong. Because with time, and sun, and rain, and love, this tree will be something more. It just needs time.

And as you get closer to the tree, and you lose sight of the other trees around it, you begin to see the smallest buds of a spring flower, ready to begin its transformation. This tree was not ugly. This tree was carrying life. This tree was in the process of changing into something beautiful. When you look to the smallest portions of the tree, you see how much growth it really has, and you see the tiny hints that this growth is on its way. When you approached the tree from a different angle, and when you looked at the tree on its own, and when you stopped comparing these trees who are so unique in structure, you can see how this tree is more than you previously thought.

And these are the trees that give us the oxygen we breathe. These trees are the reason my lungs were filled with air, the reason my heart was beating, the reason I was completing this walk. And to think that I nearly ended all of that... To think that I wasted the hard work of all of these beautiful trees…

These trees are special. These trees are unique. These trees are what make me who I am. As I go through my life changes, so do these trees. As I blossom and grow into someone bigger and better than who I am today, so do these trees. And as I look around me and as I see people who have already achieved what I long for, I look to the trees. For the trees give me life, and when the time is right, the trees, and I, will blossom.