Are You Trying to Fit In?
Then stop trying — change your environment, not yourself
When everyone celebrated Halloween, I prayed for my home to be saved. I was lucky, and my house didn’t burn down, but unfortunately, my entire farm did. Most of my gardens and the trees I planted turned into coal or ashes (except for the little garden in front of my house). It was heartbreaking.
However, where there is a disaster, there is also hope, plenty of learnings, blessings to be grateful for and new opportunities. And this is what I want to concentrate on.
Just two days after the fires, the rain came. With the rain, life started to return to my farm. A month after the fires, I decided to do some clearing near my house to be better prepared for future fires. (I live in rural Australia, so I know the fires will come again. The question isn’t “if” but “when”, and I accept this.).
Everything was burned, so removing all the dead sticks should be easy.
I was getting ready to cut a small, dead-looking tree when I noticed new shoots on its trunk. I put my chainsaw down and went for a short walk. I examined other trees and bushes, and most of them were getting new growth.
It’s when I comprehended that the native trees are ready for these conditions. They have bark that protects their core — the outside burns easily and looks black in no time. However, when you scrape the black cover, the tree is perfectly intact. Some of these trees actually need fires to flourish. They produce inflammable oils to spread the fires and keep other species out of their territory. Others need the flames and heat to germinate.
All my non-native plants, which I planted here, died in the fires because I tried to force them to grow in an environment they do not belong. They aren’t “built” to withstand hot temperatures, dry conditions and fires on top of it. As soon as the flames hit their trunks, they burn and die.
And this made me think about us humans. How many of us struggle in the environment we find ourselves in? We are born in a given country, to a particular family, into a given culture and social circle. We don’t have a choice regarding the beginning of our journey on this planet called Earth; however, we aren’t trees. We can move and choose where we want to establish our roots.
We don’t have to spend our entire life in the place where we were born. We don’t have to support an ideology we disagree with, follow a culture we aren’t comfortable with, worship the gods of our ancestors (respect them, yes, but we don’t have to follow the same path), or pursue the career and lifestyle others expect us to do.
We have the right to choose our own environment, go and grow where we feel comfortable and belong. This has plenty of obvious benefits, including having a fulfilling life. Nonetheless, there is a hidden benefit relating to resilience. Yes, resilience is built by overcoming adversities. However, we must have the strength to overcome whatever comes our way.
When we live in a place we dislike, carry out a job we despise, are surrounded by people we have nothing in common, lack understanding, feel lonely and rejected, and believe we are a failure, then the smallest adversity could literally kill us. Simply because we have too much going on in our lives, facing too many adversities. Like with my trees, some weren’t even burned but couldn’t withstand the heat and died.
On the contrary, when we live in a place we love, where we feel safe and protected, when our daily activity not only pays our bills but brings us joy, when we are surrounded by people who can relate to us and make us feel understood, when we have friends we can rely on, and we feel we are loved and wanted, in the place we belong, then our mental state is ready to take any adversity. As the native burned trees survived, so I made it through the fires and keep going strong (though the aftermath of the fires has been devastating… my house got saved, but plenty of other things ended up in ashes).
Remember, you are not a tree; you don’t have to fit into the environment where you barely exist. You don’t have to satisfy the needs and expectations of all those around you telling you what is right for you and what you should do to “be normal” (whatever this means; I notice people like to use this term, so I put it here) and fit in.
No, you don’t have to fit in. You are unique for a purpose; your uniqueness is your beauty and strength. If you don’t fit in, then only because you are in an environment you don’t belong to. There is nothing wrong with you or the environment; it’s just not for you.
You can move and find the right for you environment, a place where you belong and where you can thrive, and then you will feel happy. You don’t have to merely exist; you have the right to live a fulfilling life. But if you want it or not, that’s your choice. In the right environment, you will flourish, as my trees are starting just a few weeks after the fires.
The recent bushfires that affected me gave me many opportunities to learn and grow. Everything in life depends on our perception — I chose to see the blessings in disasters. My experience and the life-lessons I learned I’m sharing through my stories. You can find the stories in the list below
If you enjoyed my story, then check out these stories from other writers who also love nature, and find there solace and inspiration.
Joyce Nielsen shares with us her life in Chelan, and the natural beauty of that place, as well as all the activities she enjoyed in the mountains there. It contains plenty of photos of this magnificent place!
Libby Shively McAvoy tells us about her favorite travel destination, which is lower Florida Key, and the photos she shared just confirm the beauty of this place.
On my farm I can’t have beautiful flower gardens (they wouldn’t make it through all the droughts, heat waves, fires etc we are facing), so I enjoyed reading Hermione Wilds Writes article about gardens she nurtures, accompanied by plenty of colorful photos.
