Beechnuts, IBM, & Belief

I recently learned in The Hidden Lives of Trees the staggering odds that tree seeds face. For a beech tree, "Assuming it grows to be 400 years old, it can fruit at least sixty times and produce a total of about 1.8 million beechnuts. From these, exactly one will develop into a full-grown tree… [Wohlleben, pg. 29]” This has me thinking: with an almost unbelievable rate of failure, how do so many of these big, beautiful beeches manage to make it in the world?

From what I’ve observed and learned, tree philosophy is rather simple: reach for the sky, root in the earth, breathe deep, and stay connected with family, friends, and the forest at large. While the odds of obsolescence are staggering, do not dwell there. Strive to survive and thrive, and when it comes time, surrender to the circle of life.

Let’s take a hop, skip, and a jump away from seeds and visit IBM in the early, innovative days under then CEO Thomas J Watson. He claimed to have a formula for success, and one that seems compatible with that of our forest friends'. Watson said, “The formula for success is quite simple: double your rate of failure.”

The fact that any tree we see even exists is a miracle of possibility. The same can be said of a startup, or a star, or of us. By our very nature we are anomalies of odds — being born after a race with 100,000,000 sperm cells to fertilize our mother's egg. And we receive the very best birthday present: presence.

With this life, I want my legacy to be good, gritty, flowy work that connects and contributes to people and our planet. In an unfathomably intertwined world, “good” can seem impossible to define. But I believe in this ideal nonetheless and choose to use my heart as a compass on the journey.

Right now my passion project is GritGrow — an app for tracking projects and planting trees. This is perhaps my dozenth idea of the startup variety. Twelve is far from a million seeds, but on the horizon of time, I am to a tree as a mouse is to me.

GritGrow was inspired by a desire to follow through on meaningful projects. You can read about my failure to follow through in last week’s blog. An important point of this project is that passion passes and persistence is what makes the difference.

Angela Duckworth, author of Grit and CEO of the Character Lab, writes, “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

The etymology of “enthusiasm" comes from Greek, “inspired by God”. I believe this is indeed common because I believe everything is connected in a universal way. Endurance, on the other hand, is statistically speaking extremely rare. This word comes from the French “endurer” meaning “to make hard”. In the case of a seed growing to a tree, that’s what it takes.

Is GritGrow a seed that will become a magnificent tree? I cannot possibly know, so we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, I'll work and I’ll believe… or should I say “be-leaf!”

—gritgrow

Jan 14, 2022