Chinese Proverb: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
My weekly planner featured this Chinese Proverb. Sage advice, but I’d like to add my musings. In many ways, I’ve been a late bloomer. I didn’t become a middle school English teacher until my children were in high school; I didn’t start my EXTRAordinary Lives podcast until I was in my 50s and retired. I’m just now beginning ventures that could have, perhaps should have, been started the proverbial 20 years ago. But my tweaking of this proverb is that starting later is not starting at the beginning, with a seed. Instead, it is planting a sapling, and sometimes a weighty sapling at that.
Even though I earned my teaching credential and Master's in Education in my 40s, I had valuable past experiences to add to my new career - such as raising my own kids (and even homeschooling for several years), applying principles of my faith to my life, and having various life experiences from domestic and foreign travel to the painful death of a parent, all which deepened my understanding of literature, writing, children, parenting, and team dynamics. I was a much better teacher for the delay. True, I had much to learn and grow in as a new teacher, but I was starting not as a seed or even in a small, pint-sized pot, but in a gigantic #25 container. And now with my podcast, all the ways I’ve seen God work in my life and in the lives of others have inspired me to tell these stories and to tell them from the perspective of a sapling already growing from the seed planted many years ago in my 20’s.
I’m sure you’re similar in that none of your experiences are wasted. From my first job out of college as an intern in London at British Telecom, as a receptionist and events coordinator at a regional theater, as a student in seminary classes, as a spouse for 33 years and counting, and as a volunteer and leader in my church for over 30 years - all of these experiences and more have led to beginning new journeys, not at the start, but I’d wager, mid-way through. So yes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but by relying on all you’ve learned and gained, from the good to difficult times, you are planting that tree not from a seed, but as one with roots, a solid trunk, and many branches scattered with new verdant growth.
To use a different metaphor, take time to discover how the many avenues you’ve taken have turned into the thoroughfare of today. You are more than you realize.
Photo: Getty Images, https://images.app.goo.gl/wZzgreqiJqPZu2FT6
