We all hope to grow into the person we want to become—to grow into the person we already are—but just don’t know how yet. We’ve all seen glimpses of that awesome person inside of us, and these moments made us feel good. We’ve also seen the not-so awesome side of ourselves, which hasn’t made us feel good inside. Regardless, we can’t wait to grow into that person we want to be. We view it as getting from Point A to Point B, with Point A being the person we are now and Point B being the person we want to become. We also think we have to do many things to get to Point B. But we can’t do anything to grow; we can only allow ourselves to grow. No one can help us. We can’t rush it, either. In reality, we are already at Point B; we just don’t realize it yet.
When my siblings and I were kids, our friends down the block had an apple tree and a cherry tree in their backyard. Every year by late summer, the ripe cherries started to fall off the tree, and we picked them up and brought them home so my mother could make cherry pies. She always baked two pies, one for us and one for the Montgomerys. Then the apples would fall off the tree. Once again, we collected all the fruit and brought it home. Our mom turned these into two incredible apple pies. But in the winter, when we had a craving for those pies, we couldn’t go into the Montgomerys’ backyard and say, “Grow!” to the trees. We couldn’t speed up the process. We had to let them be and grow new fruit at their own pace. But we always knew what the outcome would be. Each spring they flowered and each fall they never failed to produce more apples and cherries. Those trees always contained the essence of what they produced. Although we couldn’t see the apples in the winter, they were always there.
It’s the same with people. If you imagine yourself to be something, you have to allow yourself to grow into that something at the right pace. Even if others can’t see it yet, you never stop being it once you imagine it to be true.