Building a business from scratch is no different to planting a seed in the hopes that it will become a tree one day. Everything in nature takes time and only grows when it is in an environment where it can flourish. There is a right time and place for everything. A time to toil and a time for harvest. A time to rest and a time to flower.

No matter how hardworking the gardener, after a certain point, he or she must surrender and leave it up to the elements of nature.

A seed cannot stay a seed forever. It is destined to be a tree.

The seed needs an environment where it can take root and plant itself…and then stay there for a long time. As to what eventually becomes of this tree–who is to say? We do not know what will come of the seeds we are planting in the ground.

Nature is by nature unpredictable. She is both splendid and terrifying, loving and vengeful, awe-inspiring and unforeseeable.

As far as trees go, Banyans are proudly resilient. They stay close to the ground and pretty much refuse to go anywhere–even the sky doesn’t interest them.

Man thinks he has grown superior to nature, but I’m not too sure. I don’t buy the idea that we humans are rulers of the Earth. Nature Herself toiled for millions of years to create the marvels of this world. Marvels that we are exploiting without replenishing.

We worry about what will happen to the environment. We speak of the environment as if it were a distant concept. But it is our environment that we are speaking of. We live on Mother Earth. She is our home. And yet we treat her like a wasteland. Is that anyway to treat one’s home?

I am weary and I am tired. I pray for rainfall and Mother Nature’s blessings.

The only thing that brings my heart peace is poetry.

Allow me the pleasure of sharing these words with you.

Till next time, goodnight.

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,

if we will make our seasons welcome here,

asking not too much of earth or heaven,

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

-A vision by wendell berry

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Dipa Sanatani is the Publisher at Mith Books and the author of The Little Light and The Merchant of Stories. In The Merchant of Stories, Dipa takes the reader on a personal journey–narrated through a series of candid journal entries–on what it takes for entrepreneurs and creatives to start their very first venture.