Are You Counting Yourself Out Too Soon?

I gave up on my Esperanza in April.

I had planted it the year before, and by summer it had become one of the brightest spots in the garden. Esperanza plants produce these bright yellow trumpet-shaped flowers that add so much beauty when the central Texas heat can overwhelm nearly everything else around. While plenty of other plants were simply trying to survive, it was happily throwing out blooms and feeding all the nearby pollinators.

Then winter came.

I knew Esperanza could die back during colder weather, so I wasn't particularly worried at first. I waited through the early spring, expecting some little sign of life to emerge from the base.

March passed. Then April. Still nothing. As we stepped into May, I told myself that she just needed another month.

Once June arrived, I accepted the obvious conclusion: it hadn't survived the cold.

I was disappointed, but this is part of gardening. And now there was an empty space begging to become something else. So we pulled out what remained of the plant – roots and all – and I scattered wildflower seeds across the area instead. If the Esperanza wasn't coming back, I figured I could at least turn its old spot into something beautiful.

And that's exactly what happened.

The wildflowers grew.

But so did the Esperanza.

Apparently, it had not gotten the memo that I'd already decided its fate.

A Slight Miscalculation

A few weeks ago, I noticed a leafy green plant growing among the wildflowers. I didn't think much of it at first. One of the things I've been learning as I've loosened my grip on controlling the garden is that all sorts of things show up that I didn't intentionally put there, and I've become much more willing to wait and see what they become.

But this one kept growing.

Soon it was taller than some of the flowers around it. Then buds appeared. And this week, those buds opened into three enormous, unmistakably yellow trumpets.

My Esperanza was back.

The same plant I had waited months for, declared dead, physically removed from the garden, and replaced with something else had apparently retained enough of itself to begin again.

And not timidly, either.

It is now rising above the wildflowers I planted and seems well on its way to becoming one of the standouts of the fall garden.

I cannot help but to feel a sense of respect and admiration.

On Blooming Late

As I began my morning yesterday in the garden, I started thinking about how I had decided that the Esperanza's time had passed.

There was a timeline in my head for when it should have returned. Once we moved sufficiently beyond that timeline, I stopped interpreting the absence of growth as not yet and started interpreting it as never.

I don't think we just do this with plants.

There are so many timelines we carry around for our own lives: when a career should take off, when we should know what we're doing, when the business should become successful, when we should find a partner, write the book, make the change, figure ourselves out.

Even when we consciously reject the idea that everyone should follow the same path, it can be surprisingly easy to look around and wonder whether we've missed some invisible deadline.

Which is why I was fascinated to find research suggesting that our assumptions about when people "peak" may not hold up particularly well.

To be more accurate: it directly disproves what most of us have been taught.

In a 2018 Nature study, researchers examined the careers of thousands of artists, film directors, and scientists. They found that periods of unusually high-impact work – the researchers called them "hot streaks" – could emerge at remarkably different points in a person's career.

There wasn't one predictable window in which someone's most consequential period had to occur. Regardless of how similar the individuals or paths taken.

A later study made the finding even more interesting. Researchers looking at those same kinds of creative careers found that hot streaks were often preceded by a period of exploration – trying different styles, ideas, or areas of interest – followed by a period of greater focus.

What might look from the outside like wandering wasn't necessarily wasted time at all. It could be part of what eventually allowed something particularly meaningful to emerge.

I love that.

Not because it promises that everything we're waiting for will eventually happen. Some plants really don't come back. Some paths end. Some dreams change, and sometimes moving on is exactly what allows something better to grow.

But perhaps we're a little too eager to interpret not yet as evidence that it's never going to happen.

Maybe the Timeline Was Wrong

There have been plenty of times in my own life when I've wondered whether I should be further along than I am. I've been asking myself this very question quite a lot lately, to be honest.

I think it's particularly easy when you're building something, changing careers, creating, or doing anything without a clearly defined path in front of you. Someone else reaches a milestone and suddenly their timeline becomes a measuring stick for your own.

The Esperanza offered me a slightly different perspective.

For months, nothing visible was happening. By my assessment, the plant was finished. Clearly, my assessment was missing some information.

Something remained below the surface. Something capable of growing again. And once the conditions were right, it did – entirely unconcerned with the fact that I had already written the ending.

There's something wonderfully reassuring about that.

We don't always know what is still taking root in the parts of our lives where we can't yet see much evidence of progress. The learning, experimenting, recovering, questioning, failing, changing direction – all of it can look remarkably unimpressive while we're living through it.

And then, sometimes, something blooms.

Maybe later than we expected. Maybe in a completely different form. Maybe right through the middle of the wildflowers we planted after deciding it wasn't coming back.

My Esperanza is certainly not embarrassed about being late.

It's just growing. Beautifully!

And after I literally pulled it out by the roots and replaced it, she seems determined to become the brightest star of the garden.

Hello, resilience.