Learn To Bloom Where You are Planted

Athletics, especially football, was very big in my hometown in Ohio. In the beginning of my athletic endeavors, I was small…in other words, I was a little “shorty.” In grade school, I thought, “I’m going to grow a lot more, because I’m going to be an “all-around athlete and play every sport at the high school.” But let’s face it, so often little dudes get overlooked, slighted, disregarded – they are usually not the first option. I cried when in middle school my own mother, who loved me dearly, said, “Robert Lee, you’re not going to grow much more.” I longed to be tall…you know how it goes…my clothes would hang on me better…the girls liked tall guys…the coaches liked “tall guys” not “small guys.” 

But then something happened…I learned a lesson I now refer to as, “bloom where you are planted.” The late, great writer James Baldwin once said, “Not everything in life can be changed, but anything that might be changed must first be faced.” In short, “bloom where you are planted!” The message behind this catchphrase is that you must seek to excel where you are rather than daydreaming of where you would like to be. Focus on what you have rather than bemoan what you do not have. To bloom where you’re planted you need to work on what you are good at, seek other interests besides what you do well, and hang tight: learn to endure difficulty, hardship, and stressful circumstances.

What did that look like for me as a young guy, heading into middle school? It started with a slow realization that while I was not the tallest guy on the field, court, ball diamond, track or mat, I could strive to be the best conditioned, strongest, fastest, toughest. Through hard, consistent work and training I realized that I could jump really high for a guy my height. And here’s the truth: “You don’t have to stand high off the ground in order to jump high of the ground!” These things led me at 5’6” 160 lbs. to be a starter on the high school football team in my junior and senior years.  By my senior year in college, I was a four-year starter as an undersized 180 lb. all-conference fullback and a member of the record-setting sprint relay teams at my university and college conference. Here’s the life lesson I learned: you can’t measure heart, but you can register the results of it! 

So, I encourage you today, in every aspect of your life, bloom where YOU are planted! Many of us look at our lives and wish things were different—really different. We wish we were taller…we wish we were bigger (or smaller)…we wish we were smarter…could write better, read better, lead better…we wish we were more handsome or prettier. We wish we were a better athlete…stronger…faster…more skillful…and as life moves on, we wish we were married, or we wish we were married to someone else. We wish we’d taken another job, or we wish we’d gone in a completely different direction at some point. We wish this, and we wish that. We live in a cloudy world of “if only” and “what ifs”. When we do that, we miss this very important fact: Where we end up going and what we end up doing…ultimately matters much less than who we end up becoming…ON THE INSIDE as a person. And truly, that is the most critical piece!