What a Tree Already Knows About Growing Older

__A story of likeness, with metaphorical leniency in sharing the story!

A tree spends its whole life growing toward light, yet nothing about that growth happens all at once. 

Tap Roots and Lateral Roots reach first, quiet and unseen, gathering what the soil offers.
A Trunk rises from that gathering, carrying water upward and sugars downward, season after season. Branches follow, spreading wide enough to hold whatever the canopy will someday need.
Only then does the Canopy open, wide and green, turning sunlight into the energy that feeds the whole standing shape.
All in unison for living tall, a gift in its presence!

A person crossing sixty moves through something close to the same order. 

Years become roots first — the lateral kind, spreading shallow and wide, drawing in whatever a long life has offered. This is the season of valuing aging, when a person stops treating age like a cost and starts treating it like nourishment. The work is slow and mostly unseen, much like roots hidden beneath grass.

As the tree grows, a second root grows straight down. This is curated experience, the tap root that anchors a person once the shallow gathering settles into something steadier. Curating means selecting which experiences and expertise (memories and skills) hold substance and letting the rest loosen its grip on decision-making. A tree with only lateral roots and a small taproot blows over in strong winds. An establishing tap root lets a person stand through the storms that come with growing older.

Once a person is anchored, something in them moves upward, the way sap moves through a trunk. This is mentoring — educating in its oldest sense, simply carrying what the roots gathered to wherever it can be used next. A trunk never keeps the water for itself; it exists only to move it along. A person mentoring works the same way, passing curated experience to someone still building their own root system. The same in reverse.

What the trunk moves upward eventually reaches the branches, and this is where legacy takes shape. Branches are structure, the framework that holds everything else in visible shape. They are what remains even after the leaves fall, the architecture that carries a life's reach and gives it form people can see and stand under. Legacy grows through many seasons, never in a single one; it thickens one ring at a time, the same way branches thicken year over year.

The canopy is the last part to open, and it is also the part doing the most work. Photosynthesis is conversion — light becoming energy, right now, continuously, feeding the tree and releasing oxygen for everything living nearby. This is Legacent: legacy turned into an ongoing act rather than a finished monument. People who practise Legacent earn recognition for what they consistently convert, season after season, instead of just for what they originally built.

One more thing a tree shares with us: there is more than one way to hold a canopy*.
A deciduous tree drops its leaves and grows a new canopy each year, reinventing its shape as it goes.
A coniferous tree maintains its needle coverage throughout every winter (yet, needles fall!)
Neither tree is doing it more correctly than the other.
They are simply different species living their truth in the climate where they reside.
People crossing sixty each find their own way of becoming Legacent, in their words, on their terms, where they live.

* There are trees__around the world__sharing variations of this statement like the larch.

Every aspect of a tree depends completely on the other.
Roots without a canopy have nothing to feed. A canopy without roots has nothing to draw from.

A life moving toward Legacent works the same way: valuing aging, curated experience, leveraging mentoring, nurturing legacy, and becoming a Legacent are less like five separate achievements and more like one living architexture. Each essential depends on the others completely, the way a tree depends on all of itself just to keep standing.

A Gift:
Here is this I-progression for persons:

Here is this I-progression for people:

Begin Your Legacy Conversation

Your experience carries stories, lessons, and insights that deserve to be explored.

A Legacy Conversation helps you reflect on your journey, curate what matters, and discover how your lived experience can become a meaningful contribution.

In 55 minutes, we will explore your aging journey, your defining experiences, your mentoring potential, and the legacy you want to continue creating.

You receive a recorded conversation, video, and transcript to help you reflect on what emerges.

Start your Legacy Conversation today — and discover what your experience is ready to contribute.

Create Your Legacent Map

Your experience contains patterns, possibilities, and pathways waiting to be mapped.

A Legacent Map Making Conversation helps you transform decades of lived experience into a practical contribution map using the MAKES MAPPS framework.

In 90 minutes, you will begin mapping your knowledge, actions, engagements, stories, and future pathways.

You receive your personalized map, video recording, and transcript as a foundation for your next contribution.

Create your Legacent Map today — and explore tomorrow through what you already know.

Consider this strategic distinction between the two offers:

Legacy Conversation = Discover what matters. More here
Legacent Map Making = Design what comes next. More here

Together, they create a natural pathway:

Aging → Curation → Mentoring → Legacy → Legacent

The first helps You understand your story.
The second helps You draft the map that turns your story into contribution.

Comments are appreciated_ What questions-comments would you like to share? What can we improve, focus and/or strengthen with this article?
When you provide your email--it is for us to chat about your message--we will NOT add you to any list. Period!

To receive email updates on additions to the Blog 
place the word BLOG in the comments. That simple! 
You'll receive emails about the Blog ONLY!
Also, you can ask questions - share a comment - pass along a funny.