Growth

​Growth
Merril and I love our home.  We have planted three trees where the sun shines into the outdoor area we sit.  In summer it is too hot in the afternoon, we go elsewhere.  We know what two trees will do, but we do not know what the other will do.  We have read that in a garden it only grows to a certain height.  My question is, how does it know it is in a garden?  We have cut it back a couple of times and it continues to grow.
We usually look to see how big a plant gets.  Mostly we know and plant it in an appropriate place. 
It sort of reminds me of something Zig Zigler a great motivator of the previous century talked about.  He used an illustration with flees.  Apparently some fleas were put in a bottle and they would only jump as high as the lid.  I don’t blame them.  Who would want to hit their head all the time.
The thing is, the lid could be open and the flees would only jump as high as they had.  They would never escape, even though freedom beckoned.  They had been conditioned to jump a certain height, and they would go to that height, and no more.
It has occurred to me that I am a bit like our tree (any similarities end at this point).  I don’t know how tall I can get (I am talking about more than my physical height here as I have no doubt started to shrink – besides, I am a feet and inches person.  I don’t know what I am in kilometres).  In some cases, I will not reach the heights I imagine.  In other cases, I will exceed my expectation.  The thing is, I don’t know.  What I do not want to do is place my own limits on how high I can jump.
The limit I set may be self-imposed.  I can base it on my expectation and my experiences to date.  I don’t know what the future holds though.  I may get really good at something.  I do not want to hold myself back because I never believed I could do something.  What I can do, may be way better than what I thought.  I want to jump out of the bottle and make my escape bid.
Of course, where I am may be as good as it gets in some things.  I can live with that.  It really does not matter if I am good at one thing or 10 things.  I need to make the most of my opportunities and not hold myself back in the false belief that “you’ll never be able to do that.”  I don’t know what I can do.  I may surprise myself.