What If Life Isn’t a Ladder? A Lesson on Being Yourself
Dear Friend,
I’ve thought about this since I was a kid.
We are all different.
Different in personality.
Different in strengths.
Different in weaknesses.
Different in how we move through the world.
And yet somewhere along the way, we start measuring those differences as if life is a ladder.
Some traits are higher.
Some are lower.
Some are impressive.
Some are embarrassing.
We climb.
We compare.
We evaluate.
And someone always seems one rung above us.
I’ve felt that.
I’ve compared myself.
I’ve felt inadequate.
I’ve let someone else’s strength make me question my own.
It hurts. It really does.
And I think it’s even louder now.
We live in a world where we can see everyone. All the time.
Their wins.
Their highlights.
Their polished moments.
It becomes easy to believe the ladder is real.
But what if it isn’t?
What if we’re labeling everything incorrectly?
What if life was never meant to be a ladder at all?
When I wrote Emma Lee Spots Her Spot, this was in my heart.
Emma Lee looks at her spots and sees them as flaws. She measures herself against the other cows. She assumes different means lower.
She believes she is somewhere near the bottom.
Until Nolan, the wise gnome, shows her something simple.
A garden.
In his garden, nothing is ranked.
The rose doesn’t apologize for being red only at the petals.
The leaves don’t wish they were brighter.
The foxtail fern doesn’t feel embarrassed standing next to an oak tree.
That would be nonsense.
The greenery makes the flowers pop.
The small makes the tall more magnificent.
The variation is what gives the garden depth.
And no one is asking which plant is “winning.”
Yet we do this to ourselves constantly.
We take something that was designed for contrast and turn it into competition.
We treat difference like deficiency.
But what if your softness is what someone else needs?
What if your quietness makes space for others?
What if your creativity fills a gap no one else can?
What if the thing you’ve been trying to fix… is actually the thing that makes you necessary?
Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
I believe that.
Not in a loud, rebellious way.
But in a steady, grounded way.
Be yourself.
Spots and all.
Be you in your shape.
Your size.
Your temperament.
Your pace.
A garden isn’t beautiful because everything is the same height.
It’s beautiful because everything is fully itself.
And maybe the same is true for us.
Until next time,
A. B. Wade
Author of the On The Farm Collection