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The term rooted has starred in a lot of conversations and has had a good connotation of strength and wisdom. Saying someone is rooted is almost as crowning them King or Queen. And when you see the vital role roots play in the standing tall of a tree, it is only right to relate it to everything powerful and unswayed.

Being rooted in culture has a lot to do with traditional practices; knowing and practicing spiritual rituals, awareness of the origin of the clan and clan name, performing ceremonies and everything that has to do with what and how your people conducted themselves in the olden days. Culture believes the only way to move forward is to step back and know “where you come from.”

Whilst religion speaks of rootedness as the ability to carry out the rules and laws set up for a specific group of people whether documented on paper or passed orally from one generation to the other. The focus is usually on the future—the compliance is done keeping in mind of repayments in the future; whether in a form of returned favours or blessings. Religion says if you suffer on earth you are repaid in heaven, or you are reborn a wealthy man.

Rootedness takes a centered approach—there is a core that ties everything together and that determines how and when you should do things. But roots have a luxury to only travel so far; there are limits to the height or the width and even with the continuous addition of circles in the width of the trunk, the growth is still limited.

So what does this mean?

Being rooted in a specific practice or anything outside yourself has the potential to limit you to only that practice, you become narrow-minded per say. Notice that things we claim to be rooted in perpetuate segregation. So because I am rooted in my religion, it means everything I do branches and stems out from religion, and those who do things outside my belief or practice are seen as wrong, indecisive and or rebellious.

Human beings are meant to explore, experience and grow. We are the only creations that have unlimited potential; we fly with the birds, we swim with the fish, we climb trees and mountains and crawl in the belly of earth. So how do you, with a rooted mindset, create opportunities for yourself to learn things outside what you have committed to live for?

Remember people staying in a specific township without the luxury of visiting other townships will only know life as being lived in that specific township. That person’s thoughts, behaviour and decision making process will be extremely reliant on how things are done in that area. We then find that most of the time people are rooted in certain things because they have only been exposed to that amount of information, once they get a feel of other things they find that their world changes and becomes bigger and less foreign.

However when you stay rooted to yourself you experience counter effects; this is how pure your thoughts are about yourself and others, how self-loving you are even in the toughest days, the ability to have constructive conversations with yourself and come into “objective” conclusions by yourself.

Your growth, unlike that of other creations, is determined by yourself, so being rooted in self gives opportunities to grow in all aspects of life. It is important that we shift the way we frame ideas that, in the long run, prove to be a disadvantage more than an advantage. Be rooted and be flexible.

Written by Mapule Dhlamini

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