My wife, Teresa, and I love strolling through gardens, meandering on quiet walkways along the banks of a bubbling mountain stream, hiking through the thick, lush foliage of a mountain trail. This is one of the countless reasons we love living in the mountains of east Tennessee. I oftentimes say to anyone who cares to listen, “I wasn’t born in Tennessee, but I got here as quick as I could!” It has been a long-time dream of ours to live in the mountains, and that dream has come true, as we now reside in Pigeon Forge, just a few miles from the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Today, we took another drive along the Foothills Parkway, and then took a walk on the Townsend Walkway in the gorgeous mountain town of Townsend, TN. As we often do, we walked in silence, just enjoying the solitude and the quietness of this beautiful day. As we walked, I began to think about how unbelievably blessed I am. I began to recount, in my mind, the multitudes of blessings I experience each and every day. And as I pondered these thoughts, a very clear message popped ever so clearly in my mind: bloom where you’re planted.

Simple, right? Bloom where you’re planted. Through the 46 years of our marriage, Teresa and I have lived in four different states: South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, and now Tennessee. We have been blessed to visit quite a few more states, enjoying a wide variety of landscapes, from looming mountain peaks to deep, rugged canyons. We have seen the majestic beauty of snow-capped mountains in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, and the arid, bone-dry, barren landscape of Arizona and New Mexico. We have been awed by the rugged beauty of the Grand Tetons, and the lush foliage of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Everywhere we have been blessed to travel, especially everywhere that we have been privileged to live, have given us opportunities to bloom where we were planted.

It really matters very little where we are planted. What matters is how we bloom where we are. I have had conversations with so many individuals who could not seem to find contentment and joy. They always wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else, perhaps even with someone else, thinking that those changes would bring them something they were missing. Instead of enjoying where they were, they were always looking for something new and exciting to add zest to their lives.

Please don’t misunderstand my point here. It is always good and appropriate to dream about the future. But to do so to such a degree that it robs me of the pleasures of my present life, then those dreams will ultimately become nightmares. They will cause me to think of myself as a failure, not being able to make my dreams a reality.

The key, I think, is to maintain those dreams, without allowing those dreams to make me miserable where I am at the present time. Let me try to explain by using a personal illustration. Through the years, we have been privileged to enjoy family vacations. For me, part of the excitement of a vacation is planning for it. I actually begin planning a vacation far in advance. I try to make sure the trip is almost as enjoyable as the destination. Part of my planning would be researching fun and exciting stops along the way. My family would only reap the benefits of all my pre-trip planning after the trip started, but I had been relishing the trip far more due to all my research and planning.

However, when the day finally arrived for our departure, the trip was exciting and fun due to all the “extras” I had added to the agenda. So, the trip itself was part of the fun. Granted, those stops along the way were not even comparable with the destination, but it made the long drive a little more bearable.

Let’s try to apply that to life. As I write this blog, we continue to be in the throes of the Coronavirus epidemic. Many of us are planted in isolation, and even when we are out in public we are trying to stay as far away from others as possible. We can decide to be a weed during these days. Weeds tend to suck the life out of the beautiful flowers and plants that are blooming all around. But how much better is it to be a bloom among the weeds.

We are all on a journey right now, right? We’re on a journey between the restrictions of the pandemic and the freedom of a pandemic free environment. We can become weeds, choking the life out of those around us; or, we can bloom where we are, bringing light and life to those around us.

So, let’s make the most of our present circumstances. Let’s make the decision to not allow the restrictions imposed upon us to make us miserable, bitter individuals who are like a dark cloud over everyone we meet. Rather, let’s be the beam of sunshine shooting rays through the clouds, brightening the day for everyone we meet.

So, how do we do that? My suggestion: bloom where you’re planted. Your days will be much more enjoyable, for you, and for those around you.