Bend Without Breaking
The Winds of Change
About 20 minutes from my house is a living legend that’s made history. It was not an overnight success. It’s been adapting and growing for hundreds of years to gain respect and earn its place in the history books.
It is a Tree. A massive, awe-inspiring Southern Oak tree called the Angel Oak. It’s considered to be the largest Live Oak Tree east of the Mississippi. Estimated to be 4-5 hundred years old, that actually makes it one of the oldest living things in the country. It is a living spectacle of resilience and a symbol of strength and endurance.
It’s hard to grasp how large it seems when you stand under its branches. I once went to a ballet under the Angel Oak and a dozen dancers ‘waited in the wings’ behind it and were completely out of site. They even did their costume changes behind it.
The tree’s massive, gnarled branches stretch in all directions, providing a sprawling canopy of shade that covers 17,000 square feet. I did some research to help you envision it. If this tree was planted in the middle of a hockey rink, it would shade the entire rink! If it was planted on a tennis court, it would shade the entire court and you could put a court on each side of it… it would shade all three tennis courts!
When I first stood under its branches years ago, I remember wondering, ‘how had it become THIS’. At some point hundreds of years ago, this tree was a seed—a seed in a field with probably hundreds or thousands of other seeds. How did ONE seed become this?
That little seed had to dig down and find water and nutrients, it had to bend its branches to get sunlight. It survived, floods, hurricanes, and wars! Think of all this tree has seen. The Angel Oak is an example of epic resilience.
We can learn a lot from that tree. We are all adapting to our environment and the changes in our world. Fortunately, we are not planted in one spot. Unfortunately, we don’t get hundreds of years to make our mark, and we seem to be in a bit of a storm.
In these years that we are alive, we are living in an era where change is occurring at an unprecedented pace. Technological advances, global connectivity, and the amount of information we encounter are creating changes that are like constant wind stressing our branches. To stick with our analogy and our inspirational tree, the winds of change we are encountering are not optional. There is no place to get out of the storm of change we are living in.
The great news is that we are built for this, and you are more ‘bendable’ than you think. As humans, our brains and our bodies have been adapting to changes throughout time. We are built to adapt to our environment, and we can learn to ‘dance in the storm,’ as some might say.
Think about it, if you are reading this, then you have survived everything that life has thrown at you! You adapted and survived every challenge, hurdle, or plot twist in your life story. Congrats! You are resilient.
If you’ve had a setback, failure, medical issue, been fired, divorced, lost a loved one, or even if you’ve moved to a new town… then you have handled a struggle and the stress that came with it. Several things I just mentioned are considered some of the most stressful things we endure. You have adapted to change. You’ve been adapting all along.
I share all this to say. I know most people don’t like change. Research shows 30 percent of people are resistant to change. Another 50 percent of folks are on the fence when it comes to change, but we do not live in a stagnant world. Now is not the time to stiffen up your resolve and be unmovable. This era of change will create winners and losers. It is weeding out the unmovable. Now is the time to bend, be flexible, and be open to new ideas.
For all of us who are working hard to build successful lives, success is not about standing still and weathering the storm but about moving with the wind and growing stronger with every change.
So please remember this image of the awe-inspiring Angel Oak. Like a tree, we must bend without breaking to adapt to change. As we build a successful lifetime, our resilience determines our growth and our success.