Note to self: The future is a tree that hasn’t been planted yet

I was waiting to pick up dinner at a Nepali restaurant last week and while I waited, I was flipping through some books they had on a table in the entryway. One was The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur and one section I skimmed has stuck with me. He said, roughly, that the future is a tree that has not yet been planted, and so you cannot sit beneath its shade, you can’t eat its fruit, and you can’t build anything with its wood. 

I’d modify this a bit and say that the future is a tree that has been planted but all you’ve done is sow the seed - it hasn’t sprouted yet. You don’t even know if it will sprout at all, or if it does, what kind of tree or even plant it will be. Maybe it won’t be a tree at all. It might be a flower, or a weed, a conifer, or a fruit tree. I’ve found this metaphor and this phrase helpful in the last week anytime I found myself dwelling on the future, for good or bad. It’s helped me to remember that thinking too much about the future is as silly as trying to use this tree that doesn’t exist yet. 

There’s sensible planning that I can do—to keep going with the metaphor, I can plant more seeds, I can think about how to nurture the tree, and I can plan to water it and budget for its growth so I’m prepared—but worrying about what if the tree falls on my house, or planning out what kind of cabin I’ll build from the wood of this tree is making assumptions and spending energy on something that doesn’t exist. So I want to keep this phrase in my pocket to remember whenever I drift away from the present moment for too long—for whatever reason this phrase clicked in a meaningful way for me and I want to embrace its message more. Today is a place I’d like to spend more time, ideally under the shade of the trees that exist and surround me already.