Lessons in Perseverance from Nature
To Learn is to Grow
And we grow in all kinds of ways. We grow up, we grow tall, we grow strong, and if we’re lucky, we grow both old and wise. But ultimately, the best way to spend our lives is to simply keep growing.
The little known secret to continuing to grow is well-illustrated by a children’s book made famous in the 1930s. In all likelihood, your parents read it to you, and you read (or will eventually read) it to your children.
It’s called “The Little Engine That Could.”
Ring a bell?
The story follows the determination and resilience of a young little train. A big train breaks down trying to pull a cargo of toys over a mountain. Other trains refuse to help carry the load, but a little engine pipes up to haul the cargo. The other trains tell him he’ll never make it. He doesn’t let that stop him from trying!
In the end, the little engine huffs and puffs and choo-choos his way over the mountain to deliver the toys. Slowly, steadily, he repeats the phrase “I think I can, I think I can” over and over. It’s a fun and colorful story with an important lesson about the ways in which our inner thoughts shape our achievements.
Perseverance isn’t a life lesson you grow out of…
It’s one you grow into.
It begins with “I think I can, I think I can,” before it becomes something you regularly embody. It’s a skill, and like all skills, perseverance requires equal parts patience and practice.
It also helps to have a role model — someone (or something) to aspire to. For kids, it’s The Little Engine That Could.
For Seeds of Life founders Julie and Matt Roth, it’s the 15 year old avocado tree in their front yard.
Meet The Little Avo That Could
Julie and Matt, first and foremost, love each other, their family, and their faith.
Next on the priority list, however, will always be plants.
It’s no surprise that while on a trip across the US, they took a couple plant cuttings (if you do this, please take your cuttings responsibly, minding state legislation). The cutting they propagated?
A tiny little avocado twig.
A Hero’s Journey
Propagation is an interesting process. Using sharp clippers and at an angle to maximize the cut’s surface area, you cut a small bough off of an existing (and mature) plant, preferably one with a node or two on it. As soon as you’re able, you place the cutting in water or soil. Eventually, the cutting will sprout roots and become its own self-sufficient plant, with genetics identical to the plant you took the cutting from. You skip the seed phase, which can be long and unpredictable, and get right to the payoff of a stable plant.
Not all propagations are successful. This is nature we’re working with, after all. But, luckily for them, Julie and Matt have loads of practice with propagation. It’s kind of their bread and butter at Seeds of Life.
So, on this trip, the couple took a cutting from an incredible avocado tree and brought it back home with them. Despite the stress of a cross country journey, the cutting survived! Matt nourished it, slowly upsizing its pots as it matured into a rooted plant.
Beating the Odds
This tree, grown from a little stick, is now 15 years old and lives happily in the front yard of the Roth family residence. It’s survived as many seasons of hurricanes and tropical storms that have ripped through Central Florida over the years. It survived flooding. It survived droughts. It survived record breaking heatwaves and polar vortexes alike.
Recently, one such record-shattering polar vortex parked itself over most of the southeast. Inspired by the tree’s ability to persevere through nature’s curveballs, Julie and Matt rose at 3am to light bonfires near this beloved tree to help keep it warm in the below freezing temperatures.
Lighting the fires to warm their trees wasn’t an exact science of a process. It was fueled by equal parts coffee and “I think I can, I think I can,” — which really ought to be Matt’s official catchphrase at this point. You might be thinking “that’s a lot of work for a tree,” and you’d be right. But to Julie and Matt, this tree represents the life they’ve dedicated to each other, to their family, and to their business. It was a valiant effort at preserving the legacy of this not-so-little tree… and it worked! The tree made it out of the freezing temperatures.
Truly, this was the little avo that could.
Life Lessons from Nature
The world has a way of delivering to us what we need in each phase of our lives. For burgeoning family business owners Julie and Matt, that lesson was an avocado tree. A combination of optimism, dedication, and patience yielded them a legacy of a business, beloved plants, countless lives touched through Seeds of Life.
We all have our children’s storybooks, but when we grow out of them, we still need reminding from time to time of the stuff we’re made of. From a caterpillar’s journey into a beautiful butterfly, to an acorn’s transformation into a mighty oak, nature paints pictures of the lessons we take with us every day.
Seeds of Life isn’t just about growing plants (though, that is a delightful perk). It’s about the stories we share at each step of the way down life’s twists and turns. At the end of the day, those stories – your stories – are exactly why we do what we do.
We’d love to hear from you! Write us an email or message us on social media: what’s your life lesson from nature in this season of life?
Maybe your story will be our next “Little Avo That Could.”
