The Acorn
A year into the pandemic, stir crazy and probably not thinking straight, I bought a 15 acre olive grove near La Grange. Just before we bought it, it had 200 mature olive trees, a restored farmhouse, 160 year old log cabin and, to me at least, the place seemed magical. Of course, there is a reason why Texas is not known for its olive industry and that terrible freeze in 2021 killed off the entire orchard. In the years that followed I’ve planted all kinds of trees in the groves ̶ apples, plums, and pears─ and only a dozen or so apple trees have survived the droughts and heat.
As I sat on the front porch of the house one breezy, quiet Saturday early last spring, the misplaced, struggling fruit trees in the distance taunting me, I realized I was looking at what just might be the perfect tree. Tall, perfectly round, deep green, it stands at the center of the property, an example of nature’s perfection for which I can claim no credit. Somehow, I had not really noticed it before. It sounds silly, but that day a certain kind of wisdom about the land came to me: to watch and listen to the land, to learn its secrets, to honor and enjoy it rather than try to make it something it cannot be. It seems so obvious now. It’s not that it’s “not nice to fool mother nature” as the commercial from a few years ago said─ it’s that trying to fool mother nature is… well, just a fool’s errand.
Life is full of mystery. In my work in medicine, I often come up against a diagnostic dilemma and years ago I learned that what some of my patients suffer from defies understanding in its earliest presentations no matter how hard I try to figure it out. The process sometimes must unfold over months or years before we are sure about it, something I’ve come to terms with, but something understandably so hard for most patients to accept. A mentor early in my career told a story from a national meeting where the speaker, describing a particularly vexing case, famously said, “Having failed to make a diagnosis, we proceeded with treatment…” The story sounded ridiculous at the time, but now I think I understand what he was trying to say. Even as some conditions very slowly unfold, we must still be present and engaged with the patient, all the while trying to share with them an understanding that mystery is always part of life and frequently part of medical care. Honoring that, being honest and humble about it, all the while holding our patient’s hand is sometimes what is called for and is one of the most difficult things we do.
Accepting mystery, observing the world with curiosity and an open heart, and patiently letting life unfold is how we acquire wisdom. Accepting mystery is not easy. It requires patience and an open heart in a world that more often wants to harden our hearts. Physician wellness pioneer Rachel Remen writes of the “buddha seed” in all of us waiting to become a tree of wisdom if we will only allow it. “Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Life asks us the same thing we have been asked in every class: ‘Stay awake.’ ‘Pay attention.’ Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes for a long time... It involves a change in our basic nature, a deepening of our capacity for compassion, loving-kindness, forgiveness, harmlessness, and service. Life waters the buddha seed within us.”
Mystery is often a prelude to miracles. Within every acorn, there is a yearning and the mysterious possibility of becoming a beautiful oak tree. Clueless for so long about this land, and now at least a little wiser and more observant through painful failure, I’ve started planting live oak trees around our little “Grove House,” the house’s name now relegated to quotation marks. A couple of years in, they are growing nicely, but slowly ─ as oak trees do. By the end of this year, I will have planted one for each of our eight grandchildren, and like so many things we do in life, ultimately, the planting is not for me. Like my grandchildren, these trees will reach maturity in an unseen future many years from now. As I sit on the front porch on this magnificent spring morning, studying nature’s perfect tree and the much younger trees planted nearby, I smile to think that one day each of my grandchildren might sit in the shade of these very trees.
Brian is a rheumatologist in Austin who enjoys weekends near La Grange.