There is a story about a young boy who wanted to bring down a mighty oak tree.
The villagers laughed at him.
The tree had stood for generations. Men older and stronger than him had never thought of taking on such a task. Yet every day, the boy picked up his axe and struck the tree.
One swing.
Then another.
And another.
Days became weeks. Weeks became months. The tree remained standing, and the laughter continued.
Eventually, the boy grew tired of carrying the burden of expectation. He stopped believing that the tree would ever fall. He gave up the dream of victory.
But something interesting happened.
He did not stop axing.
He had come to enjoy the act itself.
The sound of metal meeting wood. The rhythm of his body. The satisfaction of showing up for another round. What had once been a mission slowly became a form of play.
He no longer measured his worth by whether the tree was standing or lying on the ground. He simply played the axe game whenever he felt like it.
And then one ordinary day, without warning or celebration, a single strike brought the mighty tree down.
The villagers gathered in amazement.
They wanted a method.
A secret.
A formula.
Surely there had been some hidden wisdom that separated him from everyone else.
Yet the boy remained silent.
How could he explain that the moment he stopped obsessing over the outcome was the moment the burden became lighter? How could he tell them that he had succeeded only after making peace with failure?
Eventually, he offered them a simple thought:
Forget about the goal and play with the task.
The villagers were puzzled.
One man finally asked, “Do you mean we should stop trying to bring down our own trees?”
The boy replied, “Not exactly. Stop focusing on getting the tree down. Play the axe game around it. In the end, the game serves you better than the tree’s fall.”
I think many of us know what it feels like to stand before our own mighty trees.
A degree.
A career.
Healing from old wounds.
Writing a book.
Building a family.
Changing ourselves.
We approach these things with clenched fists and anxious hearts. We count the days, monitor the progress, and wonder why fulfillment keeps moving further away.
The goal becomes so large that it steals the joy from the very activities that could have carried us there.
Perhaps this is why children learn so quickly. They play. They experiment. They fail without turning failure into a verdict on their identity. The process itself is rewarding.
Somewhere along the journey to adulthood, we forget this.
We begin to believe that every action must justify itself through results.
Rest only after achievement.
Joy only after success.
Peace only after the tree has fallen.
But life rarely works that way.
Most meaningful things require thousands of small, ordinary strikes. And if each one is endured rather than enjoyed, the journey becomes unbearably heavy.
The strange wisdom of the village boy is that he discovered freedom before success arrived. He learned to love the practice independent of the prize.
The fallen tree was almost an accident.
What truly transformed him was the person he became while playing the axe game.
Maybe that is the deeper invitation for all of us.
To write because we love writing.
To study because learning expands us.
To serve because kindness is worthwhile in itself.
To show up, not as labourers dragging ourselves toward a distant reward, but as participants in a beautiful and unfinished game.
And who knows?
One day, while we are simply enjoying another swing of the axe, the mighty tree may quietly fall on its own.
Restpiration 