If you’re like most people these days, you lead a full and hectic life. And if you’re like many others, you feel completely overwhelmed and don’t allow yourself enough down-time to balance the continual activity. If we look closely, we might find underneath this behavior lies the belief that it’s all somehow temporary; that if we work hard enough now, we’ll eventually reach a plateau where everything will calm down and we’ll finally be able to rest.

 

But what if we knew for sure that life would always be this way? How would we choose to live in the face of that? Would we continue running ourselves into the ground to no end, or would we find a way to nurture our capacity for exertion over the long haul?

 

As a symbol of the wood element – our propensity and ability to strive forward –  bamboo beautifully embodies the balanced qualities of strength and flexibility, fullness and emptiness required for sustained growth. Deeply rooted, bamboo will bend but not break in the face of adversity. Its tough exterior belies its hollow center, which creates both lightness and structural integrity. Without this internal emptiness, upward growth would be stunted by rigidity and excess weight.

 

We can cultivate metaphorical emptiness and foster our own growth through practices such as meditation and contemplation, which allow us to experience quietude and spaciousness beyond the noise and clutter of the mind. With all the things we want to accomplish, it can seem counter-intuitive to slow down and do less. But I’ve found that periodically stopping is precisely what I need in order to keep going. Like bamboo, the deeper our roots, the higher the potential to meet our aspirations.