The root

A root of a tree is a powerful thing. Its the source of all life for it. Nourishment and growth are transported through the twisted snakelike foundations. The future of the tree lies cradled within its root. From one root there could be glorious fruit, colour and even a scent that could be pleasing to the nose of both humans and living creatures. The strongest of Oak trees, the fragility of the Weeping Willow, both started with one root. The 300ft Red trees of California have grown to such great heights because of the power and direction of their roots. A dead tree however, bare, fruitless and brown with its bark falling away, dies first in the root and then it progresses into the branches and the leaves, losing all of its splendour of life. So it is with human beings. From the day our mothers give birth to us, our roots begin to grow. Our personal tree of life will grow one way or another and it will encounter certain things that could change its course, block or enhance its growth and determine the quality of fruit that we bare. The strange thing about an Olive tree is that as it grows, it will twist and turn in its own direction, it will be its own leader and it will create some very unusual patterns. But through all of this, they actually grow in a way that they were not made to, but eventually, over the years they become something beautiful and a masterpiece.
So like an Olive tree, i have made some wrong decision's in my life. I have travelled down roads that i thought were the right way for me, and time after time it was proven that i was wrong. But the problem with this is the realization of one very simple statement....."the hardest thing in the world to change is a belief system."

Through numerous crossroads and obstacles and years of abuse, caused by others emotionally, or by myself, emotionally physically and mentally, my opinion of myself became very low. The scars from these things although invisible to the untrained eye are very visible to me. If you sat on the beach and drew a line in the sand, waited until the sea washed over it and erased the groove that was made, in our eyes we could still the line. Even days later, when taking a walk along the beach and reaching that same point we would remember the feeling of cutting into the sand and we are capable of picturing that line again, even though it may not be there.

My wrong belief system started to bare its fruit. Negativity became the source of my life. It fed me, it blurred my vision of how i see things. How i see people, situations and how i see myself. If i had known better, i would have done better. But like those racehorse's lining up for the years biggest race, with leather blinkers over the side of each eye to avoid distraction, that is how i have been. Negativity became my blinkers and it was all i saw and knew. When people said something complimentary i didn't believe them. When people said something positive i didn't believe them. When people said something bad, i believed them. That was easy to believe because i was already plugged into the negative life source, so it became natural to me. To always think the worst in people, places and things.

A few years ago i was living in Texas USA. I had run from everything that i knew in the hope that my head would not follow me to the other side of the world. But instead, i remember very clearly that it greeted me when i touched down at Dallas airport. I had no escape, no way out and no where to hide from the root of my tree. I remember due to a bad relationship i was in, negative situation and a hopeless state of affairs, i had decided to go for a long walk. 4 hours had passed, many roads were taken but my mind was still the same - pumping negativity through my veins. I came upon a crossroads, one road went into the unknown and another went back to the place i had run from. I sat at that crossroads for over an hour, crying because i didn't know which way to go. I did not know that negativity is a brother to fear and lack of self worth and a cousin to a continual feeling of failure. Fear will stop a person being brave and going into the unknown. Lack of self worth will tell a person that they cant achieve anything and the feeling of failure....well that just says "game over." Eventually i had made my decision and as it was proven again it was the wrong decision. When i got back to the place i was living in i found the person i was with in bed with somebody else. If only i had been brave enough to keep going i could have saved myself from more invisible scars. But i didn't believe in myself and that stopped me from moving forward. The road we know is usually the easier one to take, but the road that smells of bravery is normally right behind the sign that says "do not enter, fear lives here." That crossroads in Texas was a very real sign to me. I was given the opportunity to change, to grow, to overcome, but i was a coward and i choose the way that i knew. I was not brave enough to walk into the dark without a torch and to feel my way through to the destination that was laid out before me. I choose to go the way where i could see. And so it has been like that all of my life. Negativity has been worn by me like an aftershave or cologne, something that is put on every morning. The problem with it is that it smells disgusting. It turns people away instead of drawing them closer. So then i am stuck alone with the stink of rotten fruit.

Until recently, this had been the source of my life, the energy within my body, the destination of my focus. But recently, through more crossroads and opportunity's, i have been able to see that there is another way. Its called positive thinking. A new concept to this battle scarred travelling boy. A new wave over the line of pain drawn in the sand. Money can buy alot of things but it can't buy this. All the money in the world can not buy freedom. Freedom from negativity can only be purchased by a decision. Before that decision there must be a pause button, so i can make that choice and not be blinkered again like those 4 legged money machines. To take a step back, to pause, to see and weigh up both routes, has become a necessity for me now. But that does not mean that i make the right choice every time, it means that i am worthy of making a choice and that my choice's are important. That i can no longer be controlled by something i don't see and by that i can see a bigger picture, not just the inside of two leather blinkers.

When it is my time to go from this world, i don't want to be the type of person who says to my grandchildren "don't try this and don't try that because there dangerous." but instead a person that says "Go out there, experience all that life has to offer you, you may fall, you may stumble, but you can always pick yourself up and try again. Your life is worth more than to stay laying down." Because the only thing we could leave as an inheritance of our lives that is worth anything, anything at all.......is our story.

I have recently come across a wonderful quote, which i read daily. Written by Henry Ford, the guy who invented the motor car. At some point in his life, proberly when he was being verbally abused for his ideas and told that his opinion on something was not good enough, he had this revelation and said....

"Whether you think you can or you can't, either way you are right."





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