Growing the whole person

Growing the whole person: when you plant a free and it grows you see the trunk, the benches, the leaves, and we often try and gauge the health and vitality of that tree by it's fruit production. These are all very important parts of that trees health, but what we don't see is what's happening underground and inside. There are root digging  deep into the soil, finding nutrients, building relationships with other organisms and building the foundation from which the rest of the tree can stabilize and grow itself. Like the tree or any plant when growing ourselves as humans we often focus on the outside beauty as a measure of health. We want to lose fat, grow muscles and give off an image of health, but we too often overlook the insides of our digestive systems, our immune systems, etc that all have equally if not more important contributors to health that build the support system that our outside bodies reed to support itself. But buying that we also have our own roots that we must cultivate. We must cultivate our soul and our spirituality to build that support system for our outside body. This included our connections through relationships with other humans, with nature with our greater purpose, with our wonder. If we don't focus on growing this part of ourselves while we over focus on the external parts we could end up with an atificially inflated body that gives off an image of health that isn't really there. We could easily end up like a tree that grows tall and produces so much fruit that it eventually collapses from the weight of it's own fruit as the underlying root system has not become strong enough to to support this external growth. 

Perhaps we would all benefit from spending more time focusing on growing our invisible infrastructure so that we grow ourselves strong enough to support ourselves during storms and harsh conditions and do not collapse from our own weight.