The older I get, the more amazed I am by nature.
Everything in nature seems to work without trying to be something else. A tree doesn’t try to become a flower. A river doesn’t try to become a mountain. They simply exist as they are.
It makes me wonder if so much of our suffering comes from trying to be someone we were never meant to be.
I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember.
Even as a child, I was the bigger kid. I’ve spent years wishing my body were different. Like so many women, I’ve imagined that life would somehow be better if I were slimmer. That maybe I’d be happier. Healthier. More attractive. More accepted.
But lately I’ve been asking myself a question I never considered before.
What if I was simply meant to be big?
Not because I should stop looking after my health.
But because this is the body I was given.
What if my purpose isn’t to spend my life trying to become a skinny mum? What if my purpose is simply to be me—as beautiful, as imperfect, and as real as I already am?
That thought has brought me an unexpected sense of peace.
Then I started paying more attention to the trees in our compound.
We have two trees of the same kind.
One grew tall and perfectly straight.
The other also grew tall, but somewhere along the way it bent. Instead of continuing straight upward, it leaned and carried on growing at an angle.
I’ve never looked at the bent tree and thought it had failed.
I’ve never looked at the straight tree and thought it was more successful.
They’re both trees.
Neither one is trying to become the other.
So why do we expect that of ourselves?
Why do we believe there’s only one acceptable body, one acceptable personality, one acceptable life?
Nature doesn’t seem to think that way.
No two trees grow exactly alike.
No two faces are the same.
No two people experience life in exactly the same way.
I can never be you.
And you can never be me.
If I spend my whole life wishing I were someone else, then I’m treating myself as though nature got it wrong when it made me.
But maybe it didn’t.
There’s something else I’ve noticed.
The bent tree in our compound has the most birds’ nests.
The straight one has none.
For a moment I wondered whether that was the bent tree’s purpose.
But the more I thought about it, the less convinced I became.
The birds don’t define the tree.
They simply make use of a tree that already exists.
If they all flew away tomorrow, the tree wouldn’t become less of a tree. It wouldn’t lose its worth. It would still stand there exactly as it is.
Maybe we’re the same.
We spend so much of our lives searching for our purpose, as though our existence needs to be justified.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe our value doesn’t come from how other people use us, admire us, or need us.
Maybe we don’t have to earn our place here.
The tree doesn’t ask why it is bent.
It doesn’t spend its life wishing it had grown straight.
It simply grows.
Perhaps there’s something to learn from that.
Perhaps accepting ourselves isn’t giving up.
Perhaps it’s finally making peace with the only person we were ever going to be.
And maybe that’s enough.