I had a college professor who would say things like:

It is incumbent on us all to sow the seeds of learning so that other generations may reap the results.

That stuck with me for a couple of reasons. First, I had to look up the definition of incumbent. Second, I needed to find out if it was too late to drop the class.

Looking at the tree near my front porch last night, I think I’m starting to understand what he meant. Wherever I look, plants are blooming. Things that had been left for dead since last Fall have started to spring to life. The brown, dried up plants in my flower bed have shaken loose the decay from last season, and shoots of green crown their heads. Even the evergreens on my property shed pine cones or sprout new growth on their tips.

The only way to tell if a plant is dead is to watch it. If it goes a year without changing, you might have a dead plant on your hands. A tree in my backyard is lifeless. The bark looks rotten, several branches cracked off during the winter, and nothing grows from it.

Life is growth. Death is atrophy. Not much in between. When we are growing, we laugh, we learn, we labor, and we LIVE. But as soon as we stop growing, we begin to atrophy and die.

The best way to keep growing is to keep learning. What have you learned recently? What have you helped someone else learn?