It was years ago, and I couldn’t understand why he came at me in so many of our interactions. Quick to anger. Ready for an argument when a simple conversation would have done. It was like my buttons were begging him to push them.
When I was at my best, I’d try to diffuse things, which rarely worked. Other times, I'd jump right in, fed up with it all. Either way, we’d usually spiral into two angry, pig-headed people slinging mud. I’d end up mad, not only at him, but also at myself for becoming someone I didn’t want to be in that moment.
The two of us shared a long history so it never surprised me when the verbal barbs began. But still, I kept hoping things would get better. I wanted them to be better.
Holding on to hope can be hard. And sometimes, it might be downright stupid where people with history are concerned. But I’m not always the fastest learner and I’m almost always slow giving up on someone.
And yet, the next time the person with a track record like a three-legged race horse hurled insults or refused to listen, I’d get hurt all over again.
One day, I was driving down the road, thinking about all this when I came to a stop sign and spotted a tree, just sitting there all green-leafed like any other. Except this one delivered an epiphany. As I looked at it, these words came out of nowhere:
Trees don’t fly.
I sat with that a bit and said it out loud.
Trees. Don't. Fly.
It didn’t matter how much I wanted my difficult person to change or how much I hoped he would. He was who he was.
He had shown me that again and again. And yet, I had wanted that tree to fly so badly. After all, I wasn’t asking for much. Some kindness. Respect. Or at least being civil. I couldn’t understand why that was too much.
Until I realized that trees don’t fly - no matter how much we want them to or think they should be able to.
Expectation isn’t rocket science. We show people every day what to expect of us. They show us, too. We can choose to believe them or not. But when the tree doesn’t fly, we can’t blame the tree. We can only blame our expectation and adjust accordingly as best we can, making changes of our own. Even if it means we sometimes have to drive on past and leave the tree behind.