A seed is placed upon the soil. it drives itself downward. It forces its way into the ground, pressing through dirt and darkness, never knowing what waits beyond the depths of oblivion. There is no guarantee there. Only resistance. Only pressure.
Yet it goes.
Roots begin to form—thin at first, fragile, but deliberate. They reach, they branch, they anchor. What cannot yet be seen above the surface is already being secured below it. Strength, before stature.
Only then does something break through.
A seedling emerges from the topsoil. The Hypocotyl arches upward, carrying the burden of the seed coat into the open air. And as the shell dries and loosens its grip, the cotyledons part.
From within, the Epicotyl pushes forward.
This is the beginning of direction.
This is the first clear claim toward the sky.
It rises, lengthens, and strengthens, and through the permission of God—eventually becoming the main trunk of the tree. Not overnight. Not without resistance. But steadily, faithfully, it becomes the central axis from which everything else will grow.
This is how a tree is formed.
I once received a call from someone asking for help. His company had been facing challenges—heavy ones.
Like most of us would, he tried to make sense of it. He searched for answers, traced possible causes, looked for solutions within his reach. But there are moments when the problem is not simply what is visible above the ground.
That was not the first time I had been invited into a company to help figure things out. I have been doing this professionally for the past six years.
Before that, I used to offer solutions for free. Back then, even a cup of coffee felt like a luxury. But there was something more valuable that came in return—respect. And in many ways, it was enough.
Because long before anything grows tall, something unseen must take hold.
We all have stories that root us. Our beginnings. Hidden struggles. Moments that never made it to the surface but shaped everything that followed.
We look at trees and marvel at their height. We admire how far they reach, how firmly they stand, how wide their branches extend. In the same way, we look at people who have found success in the fields they chose and wonder how they got there.
But what we see is only half of the story.
We should remember this:
Trees grow in two directions.
Upward—toward the light, where everything is visible, measurable, and admired.
And downward—into the dark, where strength is formed, where foundations are tested, where no one is watching.
One cannot exist without the other.
And the taller the tree aspires to become, the deeper it had been willing to grow.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters