A changed landscape

“I once heard a story about the concept of having ‘ideal conditions’ for emotional healing. The assumption is usually that we need to have nourishing conditions to give us the strength to get through a healing process. That might include social support, spiritual support, financial support, whatever means available to create safety and nourishment for an aching heart to heal and grow. Makes sense, right?

However, this story showed quite the opposite. A man presented an allegory of the unspoken benefit of having less-than-ideal conditions. As a child, he visited tobacco fields in his hometown in Canada and learned that the farmers quit watering the tobacco rather early in the season. ‘Why?’ He asked. To his young and logical mind, water equals nourishment. Withholding water would mean certain death for these plants, right? But the farmers explained that when the plants are subjected to drought conditions on the surface of the soil, the roots stretch deeper in search for water until they’ve reached deep enough to tap into a reliable source of nutrition, not just from the water, but from the soil itself. As a result the plants grow stronger. 

The moral of his story? There’s a certain kind of growth that happens in ideal conditions, but there’s an altogether different kind of growth that happens in less-than-ideal conditions. In some ways, I think I have the ideal conditions for facing the challenges in my life. I have social support, I have spiritual support. But sometimes the only source of water for my wounds is the tears running down my face. And as I cry, I feel my roots stretching deeper and deeper into Mother Earth, looking for grounding. My hope today is that, like the thirsty tobacco in the fields, I will tap into a reliable source of nutrition. And, with that, grow stronger.” 

-Anonymous