sometimes, you don’t want any more helpful advice, you just need a glass of water

i am visiting my undergraduate campus today. If you have ever done this, you know that it is strange, pretty much on the same level as visiting your old high school or primary school for that matter. A person’s years at university were supposedly very formative. Thus visiting campus, even if it is only to see a few select individuals, is like stepping back into a pressure cooker. Here I am, it is if I am saying, did I turn out like you had hoped? Did you receive the return on investment you had hoped for? Some people had placed high bets on me and I on myself, perhaps even higher.

I have not achieved what I thought I would have by this time. Four years ago when I thought about my future, I did not expect anything that has occurred, particularly over the last year. In avoiding those people from my past, I am also avoiding those antiquated expectations. I am also avoiding helpful advice that would put me back on that track. See, that advice is just another form of placing expectations on someone. Really, I do not need any more. I know what options are available, I know that should these not materialize or work out, I have the flexibility to seek out others, and I know that this all takes time. I also know that I am the worst about expecting a great deal from myself and I do not believe that this is unreasonable. I understand what I am capable of and what I need to do in order to support my capabilities.

One learns the difference between expecting what another person will do and expecting what they will become as a person. By no means am I doing what I or others expected. Many goals and dreams seem stagnant now or have died altogether. At the same time, the self is still very much alive, though it has formed itself and been formed in different ways than what was projected.

The people we want to connect with are those that care about the life inside the form and not the form itself. They are those who provide the rich soil and water and fertilizer in which we grow, not those with pruning shears and saws. The shears and saws are the helpful advice. Just as a tree will not fully thrive if the gardener continues to chop away any new growth in order to keep it in a particular form, the self too will eventually stagnate when continuously chopped at with helpful advice.

In German, the word for a nursery is “Baumschule,” which literally translates as “tree school.” I believe this is a wonderful metaphor for formal education. Schools, universities, and other places where we have teachers and mentors, so nurseries are full of gardeners that tend to plants and trees in a variety of ways. Some are concerned with giving helpful advice, others enrich the soil and let the plants grow as they are meant to.

It is not difficult to find gardeners who will prune trees. Finding ones who will water the trees is rare. It is a far less glamorous task, but it is vital for the survival of the tree.