‘Life isn’t a linear journey. Sometimes it’s one step backwards, two steps forward and then a jump out to the side’.
— Karina Halle
A mayfly lives for only two days, while a sequoia tree lives for over one thousand years. Imagine you saw a mayfly resting on the branch of a sequoia tree and you asked that mayfly, ‘Do you perceive this branch that you are standing on as being alive?’ The mayfly would say, ‘Of course not. I've been here my entire life and the branch hasn't done a thing’.
The Earth is like the tree and we are like the mayfly. We stand on a planet that was born four and a half billion years ago. While little seems to change during our lifetimes, a lot changes for the planet. Africa was once connected to the USA and Morocco to Cape Cod. Imagine for a moment, you were a different lifeform, sitting on the moon and looking down on Earth. If you blinked your eyes once every million years, you would see the planet blossoming to life.
I share this story to emphasise how everything on the planet evolves at a different rate. In the context of permanent reinvention, it is important to see that various aspects of our lives also develop at different speeds. We can't force the same timeline on everything, it only results in frustration and desperation. Our careers, our children, our relationships, our hobbies, our ...
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