I stumbled upon this Native American saying somewhere recently, and it’s stuck with me:
“No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.”
Imagine if…
- we each thought of ourselves as a branch on the tree of life? How would we act if we remembered that we are an interconnected system, dependent upon each other in order to thrive? What would change if we lived our lives remembering this?
- we each remembered that what others think of us is none of our business, but what we think of ourselves IS. I believe it matters a great deal to the world that we treat ourselves with grace and respect. Once we do that, it’s far easier to apply the Golden Rule, don’t you think?
- we realized that, as we find our right lives and careers, everything we think, say and do has the ability to create our world as we go. What kind of world do you want to live in? What are you doing to create it?
- we stopped fighting amongst ourselves. And amongst our “selves,” the different versions of the self we project to the world. When was the last time we cut ourselves, or someone else, some slack? What if we took the “tree” metaphor to heart and learned not to be so impatient with the part of us that’s mean, uninformed, lazy, scared, insecure, or jealous and treated those “selves” with patience, respect and grace?
Imagine that.
