There is a fig tree in the garden that I have been watching for months. In winter it looked dead. Bare branches, grey bark, nothing promised that there was life inside. But it stayed there, in silence, without needing to prove anything.
Then, without warning, the leaves began to sprout. First small, shy. Then, almost overnight, the whole tree filled with green. And now, at the gates of summer, the figs are beginning to appear.
I like to think that personal processes are like this. There are bare-branch seasons when it seems nothing is happening, that everything is still. But inside, the sap keeps moving. The roots keep deepening. What looks empty is, in reality, preparation.
You do not need to always be in bloom to be alive. Sometimes, the bravest thing is what happens in the apparent stillness.
The fig tree does not compete with anyone. It does not compare itself with the cherry tree that blossomed earlier, nor with the linden that grows taller. It knows its time. And I, little by little, am learning from it.