(A Personal Essay)

The Fruit and the Tree

Over the years, I have become increasingly convinced that the journey matters to me more than the destination.

But perhaps even that metaphor doesn’t fully capture it.

I think of a tree and its fruit.

The things I accomplish are fruits.

A research article is a fruit.

A book is a fruit.

An essay is a fruit.

A successful class is a fruit.

A completed project is a fruit.

Eventually, every fruit leaves the branch.

Some will be eaten and enjoyed. Some will be shared. Some may nourish someone. Others may fall unnoticed to the ground. Some will simply rot.

But something remains.

The tree.

And for me, the tree matters more than the fruit.

Every book I read does something to the tree.

Every page I write does something to the tree.

Every class I teach, every research problem I wrestle with, every mistake I make, every idea I reconsider, every new skill I struggle to learn—each adds something to the person I am becoming.

The fruit is what I produce.

The tree is what I become.

And what I become through doing something matters more to me than the recognition I receive for having done it.

Perhaps that is why I have never been particularly fascinated by counting reactions.

The world may count the fruits.

I would rather cultivate the tree.

But Fruit Contains Seeds

There is, however, one reason I care whether something I write reaches another person.

My self-improvement advocacy has made that clearer to me.

When I publish another installment of A Steady Dose of Self-Improvement, the numbers are available. A platform can tell me how many impressions it received, how many people clicked, how many reacted, and perhaps how many visited my website.

Those numbers have their uses.

But they cannot count what I most want to know.

I want to know whether a young person encountered something I wrote about self-belief and began believing a little more in what he or she could become.

I want to know whether someone read about personal accountability and stopped blaming everybody else for everything going wrong.

I want to know whether a young person encountered an idea about goal setting, discipline, continuous learning, or conquering self-doubt—and actually did something differently afterward.

I may never know.

Then I realized something about my tree.

The fruit contains seeds.

Perhaps that is ultimately what I hope my writing will do.

I don’t merely want someone to admire the fruit hanging from my branches.

I hope a young person takes something from it—a seed—and plants it in his or her own life.

Perhaps the seed takes root.

Perhaps another tree begins to grow.

That tree will not look exactly like mine. It shouldn’t. It will grow in different soil, experience different seasons, develop different branches, and eventually produce its own fruit.

And inside that fruit will be more seeds.

Someone else may plant one.

And another tree may grow.

I may never meet these people. They may never tell me that something I wrote affected them. They may not remember my name. They certainly do not owe me a Like, a Love, a Share, or a comment.

That is all right.

Because perhaps the most meaningful impact cannot be measured in reactions.

Perhaps the question is much simpler:

How many seeds took root?

I may never know the answer.

But I can keep planting.

__________

When Work Becomes Part of Life

So I return to the question with which I began:

What happens when much of the work I choose to do has become part of the life I enjoy living?

Perhaps the answer is not that work-life balance becomes unnecessary.

I still need rest.

I need my family.

I need exercise.

I need quiet moments.

I need prayer.

I need laughter.

I need occasions when I close the laptop and allow the world to continue without my interference.

But I no longer believe that I must escape from work in order to experience life.

Perhaps the better question is not whether I have divided my hours equally between work and leisure.

Perhaps I should ask:

Am I building a life in which the things I spend my days doing help me become the person I want to be?

For me, much of the answer lies in the playground.

I teach.

I read.

I research.

I write.

I create.

I play when I work.

And if, while I am playing, the tree continues to grow, produces a little fruit, and scatters a few seeds that someday grow into other trees, then I have already received something no salary, publication count, social-media metric, or applause could adequately measure.

I have enjoyed the journey.

I have grown with the tree.

And perhaps, somewhere beyond what I can see, a forest is beginning.

Better Self… Better Life… Better Nation.