Working with Limitations, Adapting for Success

I saw a struggling fir tree sapling on a walk this week. It had chosen a sunny spot away from other trees to start its life. The needles were green and the roots strongly anchored in rich soil next to the sidewalk, but it had sprouted precisely underneath the barbed-wire-topped cyclone fence surrounding an industrial facility. Had it chosen to grow off to one side or the other of the fence it would be thriving. Instead, it had woven its tip through the cyclone mesh, forward and back between the diamond grid. As it grew it was being choked and contorted. Its futile history could be seen in the multiplying dead branches at the top.

​A few paces away I saw an entirely different plant story. In a patch of dappled shade a colony of moss had claimed a fertile crack in the sidewalk. It was off to the side of the very wide path where it would not be trampled. Not only had it filled the crack where its life began, but it was spreading laterally, draping the drab sidewalk in exuberant lime velvet.

Both plants were fundamentally healthy in the beginning, but the fir tree insisted on pursuing its phototropic mission, clinging to the ideal of following the light without adapting to the unyielding obstacle of the fence. Had it simply gone around rather than engaging the fence, inch by inch, in a wrestling match, it would have ended up with a bend in the trunk and then gone straight up to the sun as it preferred.

​In contrast, the moss found only a crack, but exploited it, expanding and growing across the less-trodden portion of the walkway. There were many such patches of moss as I traveled that stretch of pavement. A few blocks away, I saw a disused segment of sidewalk completely dominated by moss, a testament to its opportunistic, adaptive strategy. The humble moss might be less mighty than the fir in stature, yet the moss is thriving, and the tree is not.

​Some limitations we accept easily in our lives, working with what we’ve got. Other limitations we fight unsuccessfully when adaptation would be the better strategy. Resisting what is apparently immovable is not “wrong”, but if you aren’t getting the results you want, then, as the late Marshall Rosenberg framed it, it’s “not very skillful,” and it’s time to adjust your strategy.

Questions for Reflection:
​What are you banging your head against on principle? What alternate ways are available to you that you have been unwilling to see or try? Are you so invested in traveling your original path that you are willing to compromise the overall success of your endeavor? Or are you confusing the path with the goal? Achieving your honorable objective requires commitment to creativity, humility, and flexibility in your methods. What is it you want right now? How might you adapt to grow towards that ideal?