The Tree Had Two Personalities

Sharp little sermons for people who refuse to confuse being grounded with being buried.

A tree is basically nature’s most successful contradiction.

Below ground, the roots are law-abiding. They hear gravity speak and immediately comply. Down they go, humble, practical, responsible. Positive gravitropism. Very respectable. Very “I pay my taxes and bring a casserole.”

Above ground, the trunk and branches want no parts of that obedience. Gravity says, “Come down here,” and the tree says, “Absolutely not.” Then it grows upward for seventy years like a wooden middle finger with leaves.

That is negative gravitropism: the elegant art of refusing the obvious pull of the world.

And isn’t that the whole damn lesson?

Part of you has to go down. You need roots. You need something buried, ugly, unseen, and honest enough to hold the entire production together. No roots, no rise. No depth, no height. No private discipline, no public bloom.

But the other part of you has to betray gravity. You have to grow in the opposite direction of what keeps trying to drag you back to average. You have to look at the pull of expectation, debt, age, shame, laziness, fear, and everybody’s dusty little opinion and say: noted, but no.

A tree does both.

It bows where it must and rises where it should.

That’s not confusion. That’s strategy.

The roots understand survival.
The branches understand audacity.
The trunk is just standing in the middle trying to keep the family from embarrassing itself.

So the next time someone tells you to stay grounded, remember: grounded is only half the assignment. The other half is growing so far above the ground that birds start treating you like real estate.

— Aūna Millér
Creator of Rooted & Rude, Shop The Root, and The Daily F🍸ckcabulary