Life Lessons from Bamboo

The fastest growing plant on the face of the earth is the Bamboo plant. At times its growth rate exceeds 39 inches an hour. It grows so fast that it often reaches its full height in just one growing season. Many species are monocarpic; they live their life, bloom and die. Along the way there are many unknowns, of course, just as in our own lives, but in the life of the bamboo plant lays a model for life from which, we can all learn.


I was in my garden yesterday doing some summer, clean up work and many of my Giant Zinnias were laying on the ground from the weight of the bloom and the rain from a recent rainstorm. The whole area they were in was looking pretty scruffy. I needed to “stake and tie them.”

In the coveted, shady corner of my garden I have bamboo growing and I frequently cut stalks and use them as stakes for tomatoes, roses and the like. I figured bamboo stakes would be ideal for this task and cut several. As I was cutting I thought about how useful the bamboo, in the corner of my garden had been, even though I received many warnings of the invasive nature of the plant and proclamations of an almost certain bamboo takeover if I planted it. Weighing the wisdom of the “plant gurus” and considering the damage the plant might do, I planted it anyway.

After living with like a “garden cancer” for years, today I read, in the Houston Chronicle, the story of a young man, David Carter, who was raising bamboo in Texas for a living. Always anxious to prove the experts wrong, my heart leaped as I read of how he had started this entrepreneurial experience to “push back” the growing landscape of cement in our cities and everywhere else you could imagine. He mentioned how much he admired the life cycle of the plant and how he related it to his own life. The bamboo lives its life, blooms and dies. How heroic a lifestyle is that he asked?

“Heroic lifestyle,” I thought. The world today needs some plain old heroes. I read on and as I read, I began to realize how right David was. There are great heroics in living a life, blooming (achieving your purpose) and dying. For over a full year the bamboo spends all its effort laying out a network of roots to support the later shoots that appear above ground, then the shoots grow quickly until they reach their full height, after years, sometimes as many as 80-100 years they bloom, then die.

Not a bad model for our lives. Here are a few thoughts I have about the lessen it teaches:

1. Lay down the root system


2. Bloom in glory


3. Die, knowing you have fulfilled your purpose

Laying Down the Roots: I wish I had been more patient and more aware as I laid my roots. I wish I had paid more attention to the need for careful consideration of what might come in the future. I wish I had given my roots more time to deepen and given more thought to their need for generating the bloom. I wish I had taken more time to grow-up!

Bloom in Glory: We all have a moment in life, an “ah ha experience,” where or purpose becomes clear and we are achieving it. That is what I call the “bloom” in life. My bloom came and went, as they all do.

I wish I had taken more time to enjoy its fragrance. One day the beauty of the bloom takes your breath away, the next day it is downhill. Blooms always seem to wilt too soon, but all must and all do. I wish I had taken more time to enjoy the bloom in my life. There are never too many. I hope for you a bloom of vivid color, entrancing fragrance and lasting presence.

Dying with Dignity: Nothing lives forever, everything lives and dies. Yet, far too little time is spent considering how we wish to die. We spend years considering how we should live, but often spend, only moments and sometimes no time at all, considering how we wish to die.

For me, I am going to be with my Lord, when I die, so I want to be ready (prayed up and forgiven) and I want to be presentable. I don‘t want any tubes attached to my arms or hanging out of my nose. I want to be clean shaven, hair slicked back and listening to my favorite song, “The Anchor Holds.” Oh, there is more to it than just that, but there is not enough time for all the details. I am praying and hoping that I will have the opportunity to leave with a commendation of having lived the life given to me, not perfect, but well - leaving behind the people I have touched and the places I have been, better than I found them.

Why not bamboo?

Win While Others Lose-A Formula for Success

Whether you can or you can't, believing that you can is more than 50 percent of the victory, far, far more!

1982 was not a good year in Houston, Texas or anywhere else, for that matter. I was in the insurance business at the time, about a third of the way through a 27 year career. Most of the Savings and Loans in the entire country and especially in Houston were either merged or confiscated or consolidated and run by the government for a several years.

Times were so bad; it seemed that most every real estate deal would fail. People were walking home mortgages right and left. Commercial developers were declaring bankruptcy in the droves. As and example, we were occupying space in a 7 story office building that was totally empty, for two years. Business was terrible and hope was something that few experienced.

The homeowners insurance market was suffering and that was being optimistic. Most of our 35 agents were in a survival mode. Everything they did was focused on hanging on the business they had and no, literally no effort was focused on acquiring new business. They believed that you could not sell homeowner's insurance, because prices were too high. This attitude was fueling an attitude of survival, rather than growth. No one was actively soliciting new homeowners business and guess what; no one was selling homeowners insurance.

That is, almost no one! No one except those agents that were new to the industry who did not know what older agent knew? Those agents fresh out of training that were anxious to build their agencies and their futures were selling homeowners insurance like it was going out of style. You see, they did not know that you could not sell homeowners insurance in this market and they were setting sales records. For the years beginning in 1982 and continuing through our leaving the industry in 1997 we led the entire company in homeowner's insurance sales.

The reason? We taught them to believe that they could achieve what they wanted and gave them the tools to do so. We kept them away, as best we could, from those people who believed they couldn't because of the times or the environment or both. We taught them the success formula:

E + R = O

O is for outcome, what ever outcome you hope to achieve from any E (event) you might encounter is determined by your R (response). We taught them that they were in control, not others, not the environment, not anything!

We taught them to be pro-active about their future and focus on what was necessary to achieve their goals and they did. They developed an attitude of success, not survival. They adopted an attitude of "I can instead of I can't." They believed they were winners and they were! Attitude is everything!

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