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There is a palm tree outside my window at work.  It’s tall thin base supports luxurious greenery at the top.  This tree is symbolic of balmy, warm climates and tropical locations.  On a dreary day like today, though, when the wind blows, the branches dance in the direction the wind pushes them.

You wouldn’t imagine, either, that the tree I am describing sits along a blah highway.  It doesn’t line some famous or glamorous roadway, and while it is pretty, it isn’t on a beach or along a sandy dune under the bright sun.  Even palm trees that aren’t in the prettiest of places, ones that line the roadside, still have some sort of beautiful significance.

As the sun comes out it casts palm tree shadows across the highway.  It is a reminder of how important it is to cast a meaningful personal shadow; how to let achievements and goals flourish at the tip of your life and grow strongly there.  A palm frond, a shadow, the wind sweeping through.  It paints a picture of the way your life should shape up.

The base of the tree is your foundation, and at the tip sits all the joy, heartache, mistakes, beliefs, happiness, accomplishments, obstacles, and emotions.  Each branch of your life is blank until you fill it up with something.

When tropical storms pass through, the palm trees are easy targets.  Branches and leaves are easily torn off in the cascading rains and the threatening wind.  Their tropical beauty can be eliminated in seconds flat.  That is when more need to be planted.

My Karate Palms

My life was growing in a very stifled direction many years ago.  I was a little overweight, a little insecure, a little lazy.  If I were a tree, I don’t think I would have been getting any taller, never mind sprouting some extra life.  Although good things were happening in my life, I didn’t really start to notice the inefficiency and dullness I projected until I started taking karate.

I’m not really sure what happened or how it happened, but it made a difference.  A big difference.

At first, learning a martial art was a very technical experience.  It was learning, but it was not about me personally.  It was the trunk of the tree.  Not until I started to move higher in rank did I suddenly notice subtle differences in all that I did.  At work, I started striving to be the best employee.  I started to volunteer because I began to have a more compassionate outlook.  I began to see the world differently.  I sprouted some real growth.

I attribute all of that to learning a martial art.

Would the same thing happen to you?  I don’t know because the experience is different for each person.  I do know that learning a martial art is a kind of growth that is unique, personal, and tremendously rewarding.  Green palm fronds are seen in shyness that is overcome, balance that is discovered, physical and mental transformation.  Students become teachers and teachers help others learn, and that’s how the growth of life reveals itself.

Your Palms

You will find a way to flourish and make your life healthier and stronger when your passion casts its shadow.  It is so easy to walk through day-to-day life without meaning.  Then, when you can, maybe you read a book, catch a movie, or take a nice vacation.

It doesn’t sound too bad.

It doesn’t sound that great either.

When you work just to survive, or get through each day in anticipation of the next vacation, or do the dreaded chores, then you are not thriving.  You need to make some changes if you want to find fulfillment with some sense of happiness.  In this particular place, your palm tree is small, not ready to cast the shadow you want to see.  Perhaps it’s time to plant another.

Experience Life to Find Your Passion

There’s no magic to finding a passion.  There is no particular place you can look for it.  You can start by trying different things to see what you like to do; or, think about what you already do that makes you happy.

Some of my friends laugh when I say “I can’t wait until I have time to get back to the gym everyday!”

They think, of all the things that I could do with a little extra time, I would pick working out?  I don’t know why, but that’s always been a passion of mine.  Not just karate, but a good weight or cardio workout.  I know that working out elevates my mood and keeps me healthy and I like the outcome.  When I turned 50 (almost 2 years ago-yikes!), I went to an exercise class and in honor of my birthday,we did 50 of everything that night. That was an awesome gift.

After starting my blog last March, there are now a whole host of folks who only know me as The Martial Arts Woman, a persona I chose because it describes the way I feel about who I am.  I re-invented the commonality of being a middle-aged woman who practices a martial art into a the person I really am.  You can do the same.

If you could pick your passion, what would it be? You have choices  in how you’d like to grow.  I know painters and car enthusiasts and writers and people who like to garden.  I know others who don’t pursue anything but complain that they are bored or not fulfilled.  The complaints, like a tropical storm on the palm tree, do nothing but stifle growth.  Like all good things, fulfillment takes an effort.  No one can create it for you.

Right now, you are in a certain phase and place in your life.  You might be the lucky enough to live luxuriously, like the palm tree lining a fancy street or the popular beach; or you may be striving to find a better place for yourself, somewhere off life’s busy highway where your true talents can be revealed.  As long as you continue to grow upwards, you are headed in the right direction.

One day, a palm tree gets tall enough to see over the highway, and the view is suddenly more spectacular than ever imagined.  Suddenly the shadow cast is a beautiful tree magnified in its own simplicity.

Don’t dance in the direction the wind pushes you. Don’t let some storm knock you down.  Don’t sit along the blah highway for long.

When you seek passion and the buds on your branches find new life, you will always cast an important shadow.  Like a tropical palm tree growing tall in the middle of paradise, no matter what, no matter where, you have beautiful significance. Don’t waste it.

That is a sure way to Win at Life.

Andrea