🌱 Roots. This is a word that I wish I could rescue from the corner into which our culture has placed it. You will have noticed that whenever we talk about something’s roots we associate them with that thing’s past. But it doesn’t make any sense - botanically or otherwise. If you look at a plant, its roots are here and now, together with the leaves and stems - in the present. Nothing about roots lives or reaches into the past.
⏰ Similarly, our roots have nothing to do with our past. Our roots are here and now, they sink into the depths of our being, where they draw the nutrition our souls need to go about their business. Their business of work and play, and learning and resting, and making friends and taking risks.
🌳 At any given moment, as the canopy of a plant reaches towards the sky, its roots dream of the most profound depths of the earth. While the leaves aspire to the sun and a life that shouts and runs, the roots yearn for water and a life that crawls sottovoce.
🌾The roots of a plant also display intelligence, an ability to sense and react. If healthy, they are constantly changing, exploring the landscape with relentless persistence.
As they get old, some of the biggest roots become woody and stiff; they settle into a fixed shape and send out ever smaller roots to explore the world on a much less adventurous quest. Food, water, energy, impressions flow in a different way, with more recycling and less novelty.
🌊 The poet said: I am rooted, but I flow. This is the practice of the wild, for us humans. Flowing, while being rooted. To be a bridge between the energy of the sun and that of the earth. To be - which means to have two natures.
🤸 No, my roots don’t have anything to do with my past, they have to do with my nature. Uncovering their mystery means to understand how I function, how I’m tapped into everything else, and what it means to be. Here and now.
