Item #17: "Bloom Where You’re Planted."

This was the title of my dear friend Jen Thompson's latest blog post*. She was referring to her latest spring outdoor planter creation but I saw metaphor. And she thus inspired this post.

See… in this headline I heard a huge message. One that transfers to work and life. It spoke an unassailable truth in an incredibly succinct way.

We bloom wherever we are rooted and where we achieve ‘plantedness’. (Planted-ness is of course an invented word for lack of a better alternative: note to add to dictionary).

If there is a lesson in here, a lesson for work and life, then let's break it down. First we must decide where we are or will be planted. Then we must get planted. And then with attention, we will bloom.

So where are you currently, or where can you be ‘Planted’?

In order to achieve ‘Bloom’, it is first required to determine where you currently are ‘Planted’, or where you could be ‘Planted’. Where is your certainty? Where does your purest most natural source of happiness lie? This is where you can build your stability. This is where you can lay your roots. The place your potential for personal greatness lies. This is the fundamental starting position for ‘Bloom’.

My sister, for example, does many things well and derives enjoyment from many sources. But there is one place she doesn’t question herself, one thing that is sure to make her happy, where she is never bored, AND, importantly (likely not coincidentally), a place where she excels. My sister is an incredible cook. Her original and surprising creations always look fantastic on the plate, and taste even better. She has not yet entirely planted herself in her cooking, but she will. And when she does, there is where she will bloom.

Once you have determined the where, what does it take to get ‘Planted’?

Having uncovered ‘the where’ of getting planted, the next step is to get ‘Planted’. In other words, to take all the energy, ambition and passion that lives within and to direct it towards ‘Planted-ness’. To focus. To commit. To invest. To bury those roots as securely as possible and to protect their placement. This means trusting ‘the where’ you have chosen and nurturing it’s growth no matter what. This is to figuratively feed and water the soil. Interestingly, the word ‘soil’ is only one letter away from the word ‘soul’.

And finally, what happens then when you ultimately ‘Bloom Where You’re Planted’?

For that I turn to the far more eloquent words of Longfellow:

These in flowers and men are more than seeming;
Workings are they of the self-same powers,
Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming,
Seeth in himself and in the flowers.

In all places, then, and in all seasons,
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things.

And with childlike, credulous affection
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.



(* http://themimicoproject.wordpress.com/ plus a Photo Credit to Jennifer Thompson)