A Part of the Whole...

There are a million tiny stepping stones across the river of my life, and if I hadn’t chosen or been placed on this path, this exact one, I would be somewhere else entirely. I would be a whole other version of myself.

I can think of moments when I did choose. Moments that I stood at a clear crossroad and made a choice that impacted my life in some monumental way. I moved out west to Colorado. I didn’t move to California. I moved back to Wisconsin. I chose to return to school. Those moments had an obvious and instant impact.



But so many of the moments were not so clearly defined. They were merely me living my life, and little by little the choices that I made each day changed the shape of the outcome as a whole. I’m sure these smaller moments had just as much impact, but I didn’t notice them. I didn’t pine or stress or worry over them. I simply lived my life, and the changes came, like how the seasons turn. One day I just noticed the difference.

So often we hear the analogy that life is a highway that we travel. We talk about the things and places and people that we’ve left behind, as if that’s even possible. As if the important events and circumstances of our lives are merely temporary, and that they can be cast off and then forgotten. As if once we’re finished with them, these things and people and emotions are no longer with us.

But I don’t think that life is a highway. I tend to think that life is more akin to how a tree grows. And that every storm, every season of sunshine, every drought and spring freeze and warm summer night becomes a part of us. A part of the whole. The storms of our lives leave their mark, sometimes they even make parts of us come crashing to the ground. Sometimes we can pick up the pieces and sometimes we just have to clean up the whole wet, ugly mess and do something with it. But inevitably the warm windy days of summer, gentle spring rains and hot humid days come, so startlingly fruitful that we can watch leaves grow by the minute.

Regardless, it all resides within us, like rings within the tree. These moments, whether painstakingly awful or unbelievably beautiful, grow within us, in every branch, through every limb. They don’t leave us, because they are a part of who we are.