by Eddie Pipkin
I was blessed to do a week of backpacking in Yosemite National Park recently. Truly spectacular. If the word spectacular was invented to describe visually stunning scenery, it found its apotheosis in describing the Yosemite valley. It was a bucket list trip, and you get the treat of me using that trip as inspiration for the next three weeks’ worth of blogs (after I treated myself to a couple of weeks off). First up, the inspiration of nature. It always surprises and delights. As Jeff Goldblum famously stated in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” Great words of wisdom when we’re feeling thwarted in our pursuits!
I am continually fascinated with the resilience of growing things. Blossom-tipped weeds that pop out of the cracks on sidewalks; wildflowers that burst from the tiniest of cracks in vertical granite slabs; vines that blanket the fence if I’m out of town for a couple of weeks; the resurrection fern that grows along the top of the outstretched limbs of live oaks, looking shriveled and dead until a rain shower passes by, then springing to full, lustrous life. Plants find a way to grow, even in the most improbable and inhospitable of spots. And having gone to the effort to grow, they are resistant to giving up the fight. They are unafraid to improvise when necessary.
The Yosemite Valley and its tributaries are a labyrinth of adamantine granite, a stunning assortment of glacier-carved rock, but what really makes those canyons beautiful is not just the endless formulations of rock itself, but the contrast of dead stone with the life-giving water that flows through them and the green things that thrive along the chasms and cling stubbornly to the ridges. Even in places where a little dirt is at a premium, trees will find a way to take root. Single ponderosa pines, twisted and distorted by the wind, stand as lonely sentinels alongside the trail. Sequoias, blackened by lightning, sometimes with hollowed-out bases, will send forth new green shoots that over time become branches that persevere.
The tree I included in the photo was pointed out to me by one of my hiking buddies.
“Look at that,” he said. “Refused to die.” Its trunk had been struck by a thunderbolt or snapped by the force of another, larger tree falling and decapitating it. Nature had dealt it a deathblow, but it, indeed, refused to perish. A remaining limb that might have spent its life as just another horizontally oriented branch, turned towards the sun, angling vertically and morphing into a proxy trunk. It ain’t pretty by conventional standards, but on it grows, season after season. The tree keeps on being a tree, the best way it knows how to be.
So should we.
It is too often that we are thwarted in our expectations and give up on ourselves. There are too many times when the path ahead is dead-ended and we turn back in defeat. Nature says find another way.
Things may not look exactly the way we thought they were going to look, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have their own inimitable beauty.
I walked past a thousand trees, experiencing them as a forest, no single individual catching my eye as distinctive, their beauty in the repeated tapestry of the pattern. But this one tree, the asymmetrical tree – one might even, uncharitably, say the misshapen tree – captured my gaze and delighted me. Its story stood out.
Our story can stand out, too, if we can find a way to stick with it and make edits as necessary.tree 2 persistence
We get caught up in the expectation that things are supposed to happen a certain way, but the reality is that there are a hundred different ways things can work out in any scenario, and while there may be a perfect path that we have envisioned and worked for, there are dozens of paths forward at any given moment in time. The view may be different. The experience certainly will be. But all of these options can be meaningful if we push through our disappointment that preferred option #1 is a non-starter. Or non-completer is probably a better phrase, because generally our stubbornness and eventual burnout comes from having invested so much in preferred option #1 that we refuse to let it go. It’s what economists and psychologists call the fallacy of sunk costs:
The sunk cost fallacy is our tendency to follow through with something that we’ve already invested heavily in (be it time, money, effort, or emotional energy), even when giving up is clearly a better idea. ( The Decision Lab)
We’re even more likely to run something into the ground – a relationship, a project, a ministry – if we are convinced it’s the only option. Nature, however, teaches us there is most always another option. Our faith teaches us that, too. Dead ends turn into new life and new adventures. We’re more willing to try something improbable if we’re out of easier options, but another way to think about it is to have other options on standby so that when we inevitably get into rocky, inhospitable territory, we can change course without quite so much pain:
- Be aware of potential alternative options for any course in which you currently heavily invested. Keep an ‘options’ journal in which you reflect on these possibilities; brainstorm them with others; keep a file of things you might do if the current thing doesn’t pan out. Spend time imagining other scenarios (which helps alleviate the anxiety of one-way-or-no-way thinking).
- Don’t cut yourself off from other options. When friends and colleagues bring up other possibilities, we often dismiss them out of hand if we have a thing we are currently invested in, but try to leave a door (or at least a window) open whenever possible. You never know when you’re going to need to pivot, sometimes on short notice.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This aphorism stands the test of time. Keep your interests varied and your connections broadly based. You never know when a primary obsession is suddenly unrealistic, and it’s time to take up a secondary interest. This keeps life interesting and flexible, having more than one thing that is worthy of your attention.
- Help other people focus on their alternative paths forward. When you see someone else struggling to figure out how to move past a seeming dead-end, get involved in helping them find a new way. That’s a great strategy for developing the muscle of re-imagining the world, and it may be a muscle you need yourself somewhere down the line.
- Pay attention when you hear stories about other people who have successfully adjusted their trajectory. These stories can be inspiring when you’re feeling down and defeated.
- Talk to other people when you’re frustrated in your journey. Not only may they have generally wise insights and personal stories to share, but often another person sees things you can’t see yourself. It’s a great way to get unstuck.
These attitudes can put us in a great position to be creatively flexible in our tenacity when it’s time to change direction. Just knowing that persistence can take dramatic and often exciting new forms turns out to be helpful in doing our current thing as well, because we are freer and more confident when we are not weighed down by the anxiety of “if I get this wrong, I’m finished.” You’re not finished. You’re just finished with that chapter and moving on to the next one.
Have you had your own journeys of growing in different and unexpected directions when the primary path forward proved untenable? Do you move through life and ministry with the confidence that whatever works or doesn’t work, there are a million possibilities for moving forward in meaningful ways? How do you persist in growing, even in the hard places? How do you help others on their own journeys? Share your comments and observations below!
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