My dentist staples life-affirming posters onto the ceilings of her examining rooms. Whenever I get my teeth cleaned, I’m put in the room with the poster of a single flower growing out of a rocky desert wasteland with the caption: "Grow where you are planted."
I understand I’m supposed to be inspired by this flower and resolve to leave my teeth cleaning believing I’ve been planted in the right space and place to grow and make a difference, or at least, have a fulfilling life.
Halfway through critiquing a book for a friend, a minor character appeared who cooked for a group of humanitarian aid workers as they traveled from port to port aboard a small ship providing medical care to isolated communities. The meals he created for the workers were brilliant and beautiful and the best he could do with whatever local ingredients were available. In short, he worked some amazing culinary magic.
In the book, after dinner, one of the aid workers asked him where he had learned to cook. He said he had trained at a top culinary school in France. When the astonished aid worker asked what someone with his skills and training was doing cooking meals on their small tug of a boat out in the middle of nowhere, he replied: “Paris didn’t need me.”
That one short line was a showstopper. I scrolled back through the text and realized that each of the characters were where they were in the story precisely because Paris didn’t need them.
Having a job or a profession is an easy excuse to feel that you are needed.
This kind of “being needed” can feel rewarding. You’re needed… so you stay where you are and do what you know how to do because, well, you’re needed.
But what if you could step back and survey your skills and your life and, like that chef, decide for yourself where you are really needed and where you want to be?
Retirement can be a rude wake-up call; so can a divorce, the closing of a company you’ve worked for all your career, technology leaving your skill set behind, burnout, or just plain restlessness.
If Paris doesn’t need you, then who does in the rapidly shifting universe we now occupy?
Good question, and in fact, a question only you can answer.
I doubt that the chef in my friend’s book completed his culinary training and then packed his bags to look for a hungry group of doctors and aid workers to feed.
That’s not how discovering who needs you usually happens.
Here’s what I think happened: this chef graduates from culinary school, works in a half-dozen kitchens in Paris, moving from one to another before he realizes he doesn’t like the hours, the pressure, or the grind of working through the same menu night after night, all the while still clinging to the idea of creating meals for people who need more than a sandwich to feed their dreams.
Then, one night, a friend calls to tell him about this boat that needs a cook.
Not interested in cooking on a boat, he tells his friend that he isn’t a cook, he’s a chef.
But your talents are wasted here, his friend says. This boat and these people don’t have much except their work and their crummy boat. They don’t know it yet, but they need you. Plus, you could use a little sun on your face, a kitchen that’s just yours, and ingredients you could never find or buy in Paris.
A week later, after an exhausting night at work, he calls his friend and agrees to take a vacation cooking on that boat for a month. Just a month.
Then that month becomes a year and…
When you take a chance to figure out who needs you, you discover, like this chef, what you need as well.
Life is more complicated than a poster stapled to your dentist’s ceiling.
Most life-changing decisions are not necessarily straightforward or quick. They’re a series of small steps that get you from one place where you might feel needed to another that gives you room to bloom.
There is truth in that "bloom where you are planted" idea. But to do it right, it helps if you're the one doing the planting.
Grow Where You’re Planted? Or Go Where You’re Needed?
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14.01.2024
My dentist staples life-affirming posters onto the ceilings of her examining rooms. Whenever I get my teeth cleaned, I’m put in the room with the poster of a single flower growing out of a rocky desert wasteland with the caption: "Grow where you are planted."
I understand I’m supposed to be inspired by this flower and resolve to leave my teeth cleaning believing I’ve been planted in the right space and place to grow and make a difference, or at least, have a fulfilling life.
Halfway through critiquing a book for a friend, a minor character appeared who cooked for a group of humanitarian aid workers as they traveled from port to port aboard a small ship providing medical care to isolated communities. The meals he created for the workers were brilliant and beautiful and the best he could do with whatever local ingredients were available. In short, he worked some amazing culinary magic.
In the book, after dinner, one of the aid workers asked him where he had learned to cook. He said he had trained at a top........
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