Is There a Purpose to Waiting?
“What you can plan is too small
for you to live.” —David Whyte
Having purpose is having vision for what lies ahead.
The only problem is once we get ‘ahead’ the horizon moves and doubt about our purpose(s) rolls in like clouds on a rainy day, occluding the light we had been using to keep from getting lost.
We are all born with our ultimate purpose encoded in our cells from the moment of conception.
Imagine with me that instead of being human we were ordinary acorns standing in front of a mirror.
Would thoughts about purpose ever conjure up the image of an oak tree?
Look at me!
I am too little.
I am not shaped at all like a tree.
I only know what it means to roll around on the ground, occasionally getting a lift by a hungry squirrel who has stored me away for supper on a winter day.
My thoughts about my purpose might sound like this…
”I was created to live on the forest floor and offer myself in sacrifice to little creatures as nourishment.
That’s my purpose and I’m sticking to it!”
The trouble with this vision for life is that I have not considered my purpose to be a lot bigger than feeding squirrels.
I am totally unaware of a larger calling, a mission embedded in my genetic code to become a tree that produces many many acorns, broad limbs clothed in leaves for shade and nourishment of the land and wildlife within the sphere of my influence.
I do not see the large schooner built from my lumber and I have no way to imagine spending my final years sailing the oceans of the world.
So I live my life in pursuit of the only purpose I can imagine…squirrel feed.
My challenge is to surrender my treasured ideas of who I am and why I am on this earth.
In order to become what the universe intended for me I must enter a long process of sitting still on the forest floor welcoming the daily pressures that push me deeper into the earth where I will spend what feels like a lifetime just waiting.
- Waiting to germinate.
- Waiting to break out of a hard shell.
- Waiting for growth to begin from deep inside.
- Waiting to put down small tendrils into the earth.
- Waiting for them to become strong roots.
- Waiting and growing through many seasons of sun and rain and cold and winds and drought.
And what am I learning while doing all this waiting and watching?
I am learning that all of creation is also in the same growth process, each creature, plant or idea finding its own place to manifest the fullness of its original design.
And waiting.
I now understand my ultimate purpose is beyond anything I have ever strived for, beyond even my ability to imagine.
So I relax my grip on what I see as my purpose and reach for that which I cannot see or dream.
This little acorn wants to sail high seas.
