Behind the Puddle

The trees are beginning to show themselves. All summer, I looked at leaves. Thousands of them. Green and full, creating shade, hiding birds, moving with the wind, filling nearly every space between me and the sky.

The branches were always there. I just didn’t notice them as much. Now, as the leaves begin to fall, the shape underneath is slowly becoming visible again. Branches. Twists. Crooked places. Old breaks. New growth.

The structure that was there all along. There is something beautiful about that. Not because the leaves weren’t beautiful. They were. They belonged to that season. But their leaving reveals something I couldn’t see while everything was full.

I wonder if our lives work that way too.

We accumulate a lot. Responsibilities. Roles. Possessions. Expectations. Commitments. Habits. Other people’s opinions. Ideas about who we are supposed to be.

Things we started doing years ago and never stopped to ask whether they still belong.

We become someone’s spouse. Parent. Grandparent. Friend. Employee. Caregiver. Helper. Organizer.

The dependable one. The strong one. The one who knows what to do. The one everyone calls. None of those things are necessarily burdens. Many of them are deeply meaningful. But after enough years, it can become difficult to tell where the roles end and we begin.

Who am I underneath everything I do?

That’s a surprisingly difficult question. I think we spend a lot of our younger lives adding. More responsibility. More experience. More possessions. More relationships. More accomplishments. More plans. More things that tell us who we are.

Then life eventually begins asking different questions. Not always: What else do you want to add? Sometimes: What don’t you need anymore?

That can feel uncomfortable. We live in a world that celebrates becoming more. Doing more. Knowing more. Having more. Producing more. Releasing rarely gets the same applause.

But maybe there are seasons when less isn’t loss. It’s clarity.

When we stop doing something because it no longer fits, we may discover what still does. When we release an expectation, we may finally recognize what we actually want. When a role changes, we may meet a part of ourselves that had very little room while we were busy being who everyone needed us to be. When we stop trying to maintain a version of ourselves that no longer exists, we may finally get acquainted with the person who does.

The tree doesn’t become less of a tree when its leaves fall. If anything, I can see it more clearly. The imperfect branches. The places where storms have changed it. The way it has grown toward the light. The evidence of all the seasons it has already survived.

Nothing is hidden. And somehow it is still enough.

Maybe simplicity isn’t stripping our lives down until nothing remains. Maybe it is making enough space to recognize what was underneath everything else. What matters. Who matters. What still fits. What doesn’t. Who we are when we aren’t performing every role we’ve accumulated.

Behind the puddle, the landscape is slowly becoming simpler. Less color. Fewer leaves. More open space. And instead of becoming empty, it is revealing things that summer kept hidden.

Maybe there are parts of us waiting for the same opportunity. Not to become someone new. Just to become visible again.