“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago…”
Afternoon walks have become a welcome break in my work day. It’s a time to simply disconnect from the demands and pressures of the day and reconnect with me. If only for a little while.
On what has become my preferred route, I pass by a stately old home, subtly accentuated with the charming architectural design elements you’d expect to see in a home of this stature. The trees on this property stand equally majestic, beautifully asymmetrical and strong.
It was on a recent walk when I noticed one of the branches on the largest tree in the yard. With the branch running almost parallel to the ground my initial thought was how perfect that branch would have been for a tree swing.
Growing up we had such a swing in our yard, a simple wooden board for the seat supported by two long ropes wrapped around a supportive branch above. Hours were spent on that swing. It was an iconic symbol of my childhood and my intention was to someday re-create the same experience for my own children to enjoy in their back yard.
I just never got around to planting the tree.
In many ways the absence of the tree to hang a swing from is itself an iconic symbol of a time in my life when my best of intentions were usually never met with the necessary actions. Dreams and big ideas habitually never became any more than empty promises even I got sick of hearing about. I remember challenging myself to either put up or shut up, to either work towards turning intentions into reality or never mention them again.
Seeing that perfect branch on that tree reminded me of what I had the opportunity to do but I never did. In my not too distant past such a revelation would make a perfect fuel source for regret and “justify” a solid dose of verbal self abuse.
I was quite good at verbal self abuse.
It may seem defiantly simplistic, but I’ve come to learn that the best way to minimize regret going forward is to not put myself into situations I’ll come to regret in the first place. To instead live and act with intention. To focus on what I can do now instead of what I didn’t do then.
I can’t water the trees I’ve never planted, I can’t go back and undo what was never done. But I certainly can plant my hopes and dreams and intentions and take the actions I need to take to make most of them come true.
A perfect fuel source for my personal growth.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago”, says the Chinese proverb.
“The second best time is now.”
Now is all we ever have.
And in every moment of now we get to decide what we will do with it.
Photo by Josie Weiss on Unsplash
Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com 