The secret is first to grow where you’re planted, no matter how unlikely the spot may seem. If you end up for a time alone, your uniqueness will shine through in clear and special ways. Suppose, though, that you feel like a solitary tree growing tall in the middle of vast water, cut off, isolated, apparently out of place, and you realize that you long for the shore. As you gain height and the beauty of lush green foliage, someone may at some time notice you, come to you, and help transform you into something new, a boat or a raft that will get you to the shore you seek, with others all around.
But wait, for that to happen, you’ll have to die to your current life, you realize and say. Yes. As is always eternally true. That’s what transformation is. And it’s why you grew big and tall. You became a properly abundant resource for what comes next.
And then you would need to be cut down before you could be built up anew. Every ending is somehow a beginning. Perhaps you were indeed meant to float, and the water all around you was a hint of that all along, a clue, a nod to your next. Have faith. Believe. Grow strong. And oh, that tree? What is it, really? On my reading of the parable, and it's my parable after all, so I guess I can offer a gloss, the tree is the ego, the worldly construct of your sacred self. It's the fabricated "you" that the real you has created to present to the world and yourself.
