A houseplant taught me one of life’s most valuable lessons
This summer, I had an epiphany.
Background
I woke up one bright summer morning to discover that my ordinary Monstera Deliciosa had sprouted new leaves. I bought this plant over a year ago from Columbia Road Flower Market and didn’t pay much attention to it except for the regular bi-weekly watering.
But after a year passed, I realized that my monstera hadn’t grown much. I did some quick research and it became clear that my monstera had outgrown her current pot. Indeed, when I managed to pry it from its pot, it was a tangled maze of roots resembling a ramen noodle forest.
Hence, the plan was made to get a larger pot and some soil that I picked up from B&Q. And while I was at it, I decided to repot all my remaining plants as well. A bright Sunday afternoon was spent repotting my plants with new soil and bigger pots.
The epiphany
But when I saw those new leaves, not even a week after repotting, I realized something important amongst the mundane days of our life, we tend to forget.
The environment we are in greatly determines how far we can go. The people, places, and pursuits that you surround yourself with greatly limit or amplify what you are capable of.
This is the epiphany that I had. When you allow yourself to remain in an environment that you have outgrown, that has nothing more to offer you, whose resources you have exhausted, you stop growing. It is time for a change. You need new soil and more room to spread your roots and sprout new leaves. And when that happens, you can reach closer to your full potential, just like my monstera is now taking up a massive portion of my living room.
This invoked a period of self-reflection and examination, where I started to identify the people, places and pursuits in my life and determine what needs to stay, what needs to change and what needs to be let go. Like a plant breaking free of its pot, sometimes we need to uproot ourselves to truly flourish.
And the growth of my monstera didn’t end there. Two months after repotting, she is still sprouting new leaves. There’s still room for growth!
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