Learning to Grow at Plant Pace
I used to hover over my avocado pit every single day, wondering why no roots had appeared yet. I’d dig up seeds to “check on them,” hoping my impatience would speed things up. Spoiler: it never did.
If you’ve ever been frustrated watching paint dry, try watching plants grow.
Somewhere between my hundredth anxious check on tomato seedlings and the day my snake plant quietly produced a new shoot, I realized something: plants weren’t just growing. They were teaching me.
Growth Happens Where You Can’t See It
During what I now call “The Great Germination Anxiety,” I was ready to give up on my herb seeds after weeks of nothing. My partner suggested I stop digging them up. Two days later, green shoots appeared.
Plants taught me that real growth often happens underground, invisible to impatient eyes. Roots expand before leaves unfurl. Healing, learning, or relationships often work the same way—change begins in places no one can see.
Growth Isn’t Linear 🌱
My Monstera sat unchanged for eight months. Then suddenly—three new leaves in two weeks. Plants grow in bursts: long pauses, then sudden leaps.
Life does too. Progress isn’t always steady; sometimes we need downtime to gather energy for the next leap forward.
Everything Has Its Season
My neighbor, a lifelong gardener, explained it simply: lettuce thrives in cool spring, tomatoes in long summer heat. No amount of impatience changes that.
Plants reminded me that timing matters. Growth, healing, and big life changes follow rhythms. Fighting them only creates frustration.
Small, Consistent Actions Add Up
My jade plant started as a tiny cutting in a coffee mug. Fifteen years later, it’s a small tree. No magic formula—just light, water, and time.
The lesson? Small, consistent care compounds into transformation, in plants and in people.
Sometimes Less is More
I nearly killed a fern by over-caring for it—repotting, misting, moving it daily. Finally, I left it alone in a bathroom corner with simple care. It recovered.
Plants remind me: sometimes the best help is to stop meddling, provide good basics, and trust the process.
Patience as Practice
Plants don’t just demand patience—they teach it. Not passive waiting, but active care: watering, checking soil, making sure light and air are right.
Patience isn’t doing nothing. It’s showing up, consistently, without rushing results.
“Celebrating small progress keeps us motivated during the long stretches between major milestones.”
The Gift of Plant Time
Living with plants has shifted how I see time. Growth isn’t instant. It’s daily, incremental, and often invisible. My avocado tree is now four years old and still fruitless—but it’s thriving, and so am I.
Plants remind me that the best transformations—healing, learning, love—happen slowly, steadily, and in ways we barely notice until one day, we do.
Every day, in countless small ways, my plants are growing. Every day, in countless small ways, so am I.
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