040 Uprooted, Not Broken
Hey Paddy, we pull you out of the ground a few weeks old and push you into the mud somewhere else, and you take hold again.
Why does being uprooted not break you?
Why doesn't being uprooted break you?
In a nursery bed, young rice plants stand thick and green. A few weeks later, farmers pull them out by the handful, roots and all.
They carry them to a flooded field and push them, one by one, into the mud.
What really happens
This is transplanting. Rice seedlings are raised in one place and moved, a few weeks old, to the main field.
It is a shock, and the plants pause for a while. But they put down new roots and take hold again, and the field turns green.
How we know: Rice transplanting is described by the International Rice Research Institute; transplanting shock is well studied.
The turn
We get uprooted too: a new city, a new school, a new job, a family move.
It hurts. We pause. And then, if we let ourselves, we put down roots again.
Three takeaways
- Being moved is not the same as being broken.
- A pause after a big change is normal.
- New roots grow when you let them.
Pulled up is not the end. It is the start of the main field.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.