My Tree
What My Tree is
Most ways of looking at a life break it into pieces and then rate the pieces. My Tree does the opposite. It holds a life as one thing, with parts that are visibly connected, and it lets a person describe each part in their own words.
Nothing on the tree is scored. There is no rating, no grade, no percentage and no overall reading of how a life is going. Nothing moves unless the person writes something new, and what they write is visible only to them.
The parts
Roots, below ground
What this life began with. Origins and starting conditions that came before the person had a say: parents, first home, country, language, class, wealth or poverty, expectation, the historical moment.
The trunk
Me. The person living and carrying the life, between the roots and the branches.
Branches, above ground
The life being lived now. In the current product the five primary branches are Health, Money, Work, Love and Family.
The canopy
What the parts make together. The life as a whole, seen from a step back.
New growth
What may still grow. Possibility rather than destination.
Sunlight
What nourishes me. What reaches the person from outside the life and gives something back.
Weather
Circumstances that arrive from outside after the life has begun, which the person did not necessarily choose.
What a tree already knows
- A life has seasons. A quiet or difficult period is not a failure of the tree and is not a decline to be corrected.
- Damage and pruning are part of a tree. Something lost, cut back or broken stays part of the shape. It is not required to heal into a lesson.
- Other trees stand nearby, with their own roots elsewhere. Other people are not parts of this person's tree, and this tree is not compared with theirs.
What it will never do
- Health, Money, Work, Love and Family are branches, above ground.
- Roots are below ground and mean what this life began with.
- No score appears on the illustration and no number changes the drawing.
- There is no overall tree score, average, percentage or completeness reading.
- Roots, trunk, branches, canopy and new growth are parts of a metaphor, not stages to complete.
- Deciding that nothing needs changing is a legitimate conclusion.