January 30

Remember how so many beautiful things in nature grow silently when no one is paying attention to them. Remember how sunlight still finds the flowers and metamorphosis still happens for the butterfly even when we forget to observe the things. And perhaps, in many ways, the same could be said of your own life.

There have been times where people may have overlooked you or ignored you and it made you wonder if who you are and where you are in your current state had any value at all. But it doesn't matter if that person didn't see your value or if they saw your potential and perhaps felt inferior to it, no matter what, this remains true: there is still room for you to keep growing as you were meant to.

One of the valuable reasons in looking to nature as an example for growth is because contrary to images of flowers or butterflies in their final stages of growth, the growth stages are not always beautiful or even noticeable to the passive observer. Even the word “grow” itself carries with it this connotation of effortlessness, grace, uninterrupted expansion, when in reality, growth is also long, slow, and often occurs in the shadows.

So when you start to feel that you are not making progress and you are not reaching your full potential, hold on to lessons in nature that continually reveal that gradual development, that takes places over different periods, oftentimes in ways that most aren’t even paying attention to are often active components of meaningful, beautiful growth.