Grow Around It

I’m hiking along a mountain trail, and I come across this tree that one day long ago ran into a problem. As its roots probed down they confronted a boulder. The process might have gone something like this:

———-
“We can’t grow into solid rock!” the roots yell. “We’re at a dead stop. Should we call it quits and just be a small tree?”
—“No,” says the tree’s command center. “How big is the boulder?”
“So big you can’t believe it. All we feel is rock.”
—“Can’t you push it out of the way?”
“No. It’ll probably push us out of the way.”
—“What can you do that the boulder cannot do?”
“Huh? Nothing!”
—“Don’t give me that. You’re able to do something the boulder cannot do.”
“Like turn around and go back?”
—“No. Like grow around it.”
“You’re kidding us.”
—“Nope. That’s what roots do. They first penetrate and grow through things.”
“We did that just fine—until we hit this impasse.”
—“If you cannot go through it, find a way around it.”
“Around it? We don’t know how big it is.”
—“So? Do whatever it takes to keep growing and moving deeper.”
“We like the small tree idea.”
—“But we are a Ponderosa Pine. We grow higher than anything else in the forest, and it won’t happen without roots. Now get rooting.”
“Sounds like a lot of extra work.”
—“Because we are a tree and not a blade of grass.”
“We’d rather just be grass.”
—“If you were grass, you’d complain even more. You’d be getting cut or eaten all the time.”
“Can’t we have a fantasy life?”
—“No. Now get digging. And do it as long as it takes.”
“That could take years!”
—“Indeed. Remember that you’re tree roots, not grass.”
———-

And so the tree roots dug and dug and grew around the boulder and found it was not infinitely big. Then they kept on penetrating deeper and never stopped.
 
Along the way a strange thing happened. The earth around the roots, and the boulder, eroded away. And this erosion became a gift to the rest of us who learned a life lesson from the boulder, the tree, and its roots.
 
Is there a boulder in your life that you cannot break through? How could you, like the tree roots, work around it to continue thriving and growing?