The other morning, I came into work to find a tree blocking my usual parking spot. A storm had come through the night before, knocking down several branches—and this tree. I got out, and as I was attempting to clear away the wreckage, it struck me. This wasn’t a whole tree. It was a branch. A branch from a much bigger tree. A storm came, and the weaker parts were ripped away as part of the process.
That’s been my experience with life. A storm comes through, and the weaker parts are removed—sometimes as abruptly as an overnight storm, other times more subtly—but the net effect is the same: the older parts are replaced with new ones. Eventually, I barely resembled a previous version of myself. The more progress I make, the bigger the pieces that get dropped, and it’s rarely a smooth or elegant process.
For those chasing Zen and a state of flow, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But the world I live in—the universe I’m trying to align to—seems to trim and grow in ways that don’t resemble smooth, Zen-like states. It appears to me that development is grossly uncomfortable. Zen, flow, and all those wonderful states are often the aftermath of development, not the process itself.
If I want flow or Zen for any period of time, I have to be willing to drop pieces of myself that might look like entire trees to other people. It’s not about getting bigger; it’s about letting go of what’s weighing me down so I can get better. The storm doesn’t create new branches—it shapes what remains.
Progress isn’t about holding onto every limb. Stability isn’t about keeping every branch. Sometimes progress means dropping a piece of yourself that others thought defined you. Those losses aren’t signs of decay or weakness—they’re opportunities to refine and align with what comes next.
In the end, it’s about understanding that shedding those pieces isn’t an act of destruction but an act of transformation. Stability is always the first casualty of new growth.
What branches are you holding onto that are keeping you from what you could be?