Sometimes you can till the soil until the entire Earth turns over, and still nothing will grow. You can water a seedling with your own tears until you flood the world, and still it will not grow. You can transfer your essence to this heart outside your body, forfeit your entire life force to this thing you will to rise, and still it will not grow.

Days will become shorter, winds sharper, nights colder. Spring will come, and the rains will fall, and the Earth will thaw. And still your saplings slumber. You work, and you till, and you pour your heart out, hoping that just one leaf will emerge from this dormant ground. And maybe even resign yourself to a monotonous fate that will never yield a harvest.

And one day, all at once, all that you’ve put forth into the world springs from the ground. Shading leaves, and sturdy branches, and deep, unyielding roots. It colors your world in chartreuses, it gives you shelter from the rain, it protects you from the sun. 

We cannot toil away at the yearnings of the heart and expect immediate pushes to our pulls. Maybe we have to prove ourselves to the faceless powers that be. Sometimes we must work harder than we thought just to see a glimmer of what he hoped for. Sometimes it happens all at once, like a geyser of good tidings. The trick is to not stop pouring yourself into its groundswell, and to not stop filling your cup with other wondrous things.