Once upon a time, there was a tree that wondered why its branches looked so different.

One reached toward gardens.

One toward bread.

One toward healing.

One toward books.

And one toward people who needed hope.

Each branch had grown during a different season of the tree’s life, and whenever a new branch began reaching toward the light, it reached with all its might.

The branch that grew toward gardens became consumed with gardens. It wanted to know every seed, every herb, every season, every secret buried beneath the soil.

Then came the branch that reached toward bread.

That branch wanted to understand flour and fermentation, grain and water, the mystery of dough rising beneath a cloth and becoming something that could nourish another person.

The branch that reached toward healing grew just as passionately.

So did the branch that reached toward books, reading everything it could find and always searching for one more thing to learn.

And then there was the branch that reached toward people who needed hope.

That one had been growing for a very long time.

Because each branch had appeared during a different season, and because each had spent so much time looking in its own direction, none of them thought very much about the others.

They simply assumed they were separate.

Until one day, the tree looked at itself and became worried.

Perhaps I have become too many things, it thought.

The branches began whispering among themselves.

The garden branch wondered what it had to do with bread.

The bread branch couldn’t understand what it had to do with healing.

The branch of books wondered where it belonged.

And the branch that reached toward people who needed hope quietly wondered whether anyone remembered it at all.

But far beneath them, underneath the soil where none of the branches could see, the roots heard everything.

Roots are very good listeners.

They spend their lives in darkness, after all, where there is little to do but listen and grow.

They heard the worry traveling down the trunk.

They heard the branches wondering where they belonged.

And the roots smiled.

“You have never grown in different directions,” they whispered.

“You have only found new ways to reach the light.”

The branches became very quiet.

They didn’t understand.

At least, not at first.

The garden branch was still a garden branch.

The bread branch was still quite certain that bread was bread.

Healing was healing.

Books were books.

And hope was something else entirely.

For a long time, each had believed its own direction was a separate destination.

And beliefs held for many seasons do not disappear simply because a root whispers something wise.

So the branches kept thinking.

Days passed.

Then weeks.

Seasons changed.

And slowly, something curious began to happen.

The garden branch noticed that what it grew sometimes became food.

The bread branch realized that what it made could nourish.

The healing branch remembered how often healing began with hope.

The branch of books realized that everything it learned eventually traveled somewhere else.

And the branch reaching toward people suddenly recognized pieces of every other branch within itself.

For the first time, the branches stopped looking only outward.

They looked inward.

Down the limbs.

Into the trunk.

And finally toward the roots they had almost forgotten were there.

That was when they saw it.

They had never been separate at all.

The same roots had been feeding every branch from the beginning.

The same trunk held them.

The same life moved through them.

And although each branch reached toward a different patch of sky, every one of them was reaching for the same light.

The tree felt an enormous relief.

It did not need to choose which branch it really was.

It did not need to cut one away to make another more important.

It did not need to explain why a tree that once reached so passionately toward healing now had flour on one branch and herbs growing from another.

It was all one tree.

And strangely enough, once the branches understood that, they began to enjoy one another much more.

The garden sent herbs toward the kitchen.

The kitchen sent nourishment toward healing.

The books sent knowledge everywhere.

And the branch that reached toward people who needed hope discovered that it had never really been one branch at all.

A little of it had been growing through every one of them.

The tree stood a little taller that day.

Not because it had finally discovered its purpose.

But because it had finally understood it.

Some people spend their lives searching for one purpose.

Others eventually discover that one purpose can grow many branches.

And perhaps the question isn’t which branch are you?

Perhaps it is:

What has been growing through all of them?

⸻

 

“Some recipes nourish the body.

Some questions nourish the soul.

Keep both close.”

 — Deborah

From the kitchen on The Nob