We Can Learn A Lot from the Trees

When life is busy and urgent needs are present, we need extra nutrients, extra sleep, and extra self-care just like tropical plants soak in the sunlight and rain aplenty. And when conditions get colder and nutrients might be scarce and we need to focus, instead, more on holding on and just keeping one foot in front of the other, perhaps its best to be more still as we wait for the verdant spring to come once again.

This week the Northwest is going through a heat wave for us at least. We might get to triple digits one day. I know: I’m a total weather wimp after living with the mild conditions. I know lots of areas are getting hit a lot harder than we have been. The thing that always throws me though is how quickly we have to adjust to these high temperatures. We go from consistent 70s straight to 90s in a matter of days, and my body just doesn’t have time to adjust.

So I’m very grateful for the air conditioning units in my place and I get out early in the morning to get in my run. It’s also made me think about things in my environment that are much more adaptive than I am. Specifically the plants around me.

I have a huge leafed tropical plant in my house and I also have fir trees. The two have nearly polar opposite strategies and it makes perfect sense given the environment that they naturally grow in. Tropical plants are heat resistant but they also assume a lot of available water. Having large leaves is no problem as long as the plants also have a lot of water and no worry of severe winters.

Fir trees on the other hand have extremely narrow needles that don’t absorb nearly as much photosynthetic energy, but they also don’t lose nearly as much water in the process of generating food. And since the fir trees in my house normally do encounter winter weather, it’s a great thing to have less photosynthesis going on because the tree really needs to reserve all of its nutrients and water until spring rather than worrying about growing leaves or vertical height.

Sometimes I feel like we could take a lesson or two from the trees. So often we try to have it both ways. We rush about trying to pack in as much urgent stuff into our days which causes stress and worry. And we don’t always take the care we need to insure we have broad enough leaves, or even self-care, to keep up this busy lifestyle. And then when we do have down time where we could reserve our energy and recharge for the spring like fir trees do, we end up feeling anxious because we feel like we’re not doing enough or we are so used to moving at a certain clip that slowing down makes us anxious. And so we pull out our phones and fill our valuable down time with flurries of news feeds that often leave us feeling less good about ourselves and our world.

And we wonder why we feel imbalanced. I don’t think that modern humans can very easily decide on being just a broad-leafed tropical plant or a fir tree. We all have to deal with both scenarios from time to time. But maybe we could adopt the strategies that both types of plants have evolved over the millions of years so they can be successful in their environments.

When life is busy and urgent needs are present, we need extra nutrients, extra sleep, and extra self-care just like tropical plants soak in the sunlight and rain aplenty. And when conditions get colder and nutrients might be scarce and we need to focus, instead, more on holding on and just keeping one foot in front of the other, perhaps its best to be more still as we wait for the verdant spring to come once again.