What Can a Tree Teach Us About People? And What Can Zsolt Teach Us About Ourselves?
My mother sent several of Zsolt Mészáros’s videos to our family group chat. Almost immediately, I could feel that the world around me had lost me for the next few hours. Not long ago in Greece, I experienced a strange connection with a weathered olive tree that was probably several hundred years old. I had told Mum about it too, so it is hardly surprising that I drank in Zsolt’s every word. I listened to interviews, took notes, and somewhere along the way, something entirely different began to happen within me.
I thought I was going to learn about trees. Only later did I understand that, for Zsolt, trees may have become a bridge to other people. As he put it, as a child, he found in them an explanation for people. He was bullied a lot, and whenever he felt sad, he escaped to the trees. In fact, I had already heard the same message in his words before I read what he himself expressed in an interview with Nők Lapja: through trees, he also tells us about people.
Perhaps this is where I should begin. This piece is about what I learned about myself while he was “talking about trees”. When he spoke about storms, I thought of people. When he spoke about an old spruce tree, I thought of the wisdom of older generations. When he said that we should not record everything because there are moments we simply need to experience, I thought about the incredibly paralysing noise that surrounds us.
One of his thoughts stayed with me in particular. In his interview with Bence Dezső, he said that simply hugging a tree is not enough. We have to pay attention. Find that one branch, that one detail that, for some reason, feels close to us. Return to it in spring, summer, autumn and winter. See it in sunshine and in a storm. The same is true of people. Seeing someone takes a moment. Paying attention to someone is a choice. And perhaps every genuine connection begins there.
His story became especially close to my heart. For years, he tried to find work in garden centres because all he really wanted was to talk about plants and trees. Without the appropriate qualifications, however, he was rejected again and again. So, despite the fact that it was far outside his comfort zone, he decided to create his own portfolio. He started his TikTok channel. Not because he wanted to become an influencer, but because he believed that what he knew and felt about trees had value. Today, hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, listen to him.
It made me think of my own story and of how the manuscript of Dreamers & Seekers came into being. You can read more about that on my blog.
“Be grateful for closed doors, because sometimes they are the very things protecting you from going somewhere you were never truly meant to be.”
I think this is where one of the most beautiful ironies of Zsolt’s story lies. He began making videos because no one would give him an opportunity. Those videos eventually gave him a far greater opportunity than he could ever have dreamed of.
It reminds me that sometimes we become so focused on a single door that we fail to notice an entire garden opening up around us. It also reminds me how easily we can walk past someone’s true value when we look only at their qualifications rather than at what they carry within them.
Zsolt originally wanted the chance to talk about trees to a small group of people. Life, however, seemed to say to him: “You will not teach in one garden. You will teach somewhere hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, can find you at once.” His passion eventually found its own path, precisely in the place where he was forced to leave his comfort zone. He had faith, perseverance and courage.
This made me think of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. His first publisher returned the rights to him because they believed the book might simply be worthless, a commercial failure. Another publisher, however, saw the magic in it. Today, it has been translated into more than eighty languages, sold at least 150 million copies worldwide, and earned a place in the Guinness World Records.
I would like to quote Zsolt directly from one of his interviews, because when I heard these words, my heart tightened. Perhaps because, in a certain sense, I have experienced something similar myself.
“I have only recently begun to truly feel the supportive power of community. Especially on our group walks, when I meet people in person. They say such beautiful things to me, and they even write messages in the guest book that make me think... I never imagined I would receive words like these, or from so many people. And they help me move forward enormously, because they make me feel that I really am worth something. That I am not that small, worthless person I came to see myself as through my experience of the education system.”
To be honest, by this point, this is no longer really about trees. It is one person’s admission that he has finally found an environment where people do not focus on what he lacks, but on what makes him special.
Why don’t we look for this in one another? Why don’t we ask children questions like these? What makes you shine? What excites you? What can hold your attention for hours? What do you do with such passion that you lose all sense of time?
Instead, far too often, we ask: What can’t you do? Where do you still need to improve?Where are you below average?
On paper, perhaps Zsolt was not the “right candidate”. But the love, curiosity and depth of attention he has brought to trees since he was four years old cannot be measured by a certificate. And I think this is one of the most important messages.
I am not saying that knowledge or qualifications do not matter. Especially when someone’s work involves saving lives. What I am saying is that passion is also a form of knowledge. And sometimes, an extraordinary one.
Here is an example. Have you heard of Rick Rubin? He is one of the most influential and successful producers in the American music industry, someone who helped revolutionise modern music and has won nine Grammy Awards. He helped launch groundbreaking artists such as Run DMC, and later worked with rock and metal bands including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC and Metallica. But he never limited himself to a single genre. He has also worked with Johnny Cash, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Linkin Park and many other artists across completely different styles. His book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, is almost like a bible to me. Rubin’s appearance and his approach are both wonderfully distinctive. With his long white beard and barefoot style, he looks more like a spiritual guru than a traditional record producer. Many people are surprised to learn that he does not operate mixing consoles and does not play musical instruments.
He was once asked, “Can you play an instrument? Do you know how to record or mix music?” He replied, “I have no technical ability, and I know nothing about music.” When he was then asked why the biggest artists in the world work with him and what they are actually paying him for, he explained that he trusts his taste and his ability to express what he feels, and that this has repeatedly proved helpful to the artists he works with.
And this is precisely what I find so magical about him. He does not necessarily try to add more to a piece of work. Instead, he often takes things away. He uses a reductive, minimalist approach, stripping songs of anything unnecessary until what remains is the pure voice, the rhythm and the artist’s genuine emotion, free from outside expectations and ego. Without the “right piece of paper”.
I do not think Zsolt claims to know more about trees than anyone else either. What he shows us is how he sees trees, what he has learned about them over the years, and he shares it with such honesty, charm, authenticity and clarity that we begin to look at them differently too. Sometimes passion is precisely what makes someone spend a lifetime learning, observing and growing.
This is also one of the ideas at the heart of Dreamers & Seekers. The people in my book are not inspiring because they know everything. They inspire me because they have found something that makes them come alive. Or because they are still searching for it with determination, despite everything they have faced. They are people like you and me.
For me, the most important question is not what you have achieved in life. It is what you are truly good at, what sets something alight inside you so strongly that twenty, thirty or even fifty years later, you can still turn towards it with the same curiosity. Zsolt’s story is about a little boy who fell in love with trees at the age of four and, as an adult, never let go of the hand of that curiosity.
My mission with my book is not to provide an answer to every question. It is to share stories that make readers look at themselves, other people or the world a little differently afterwards. Because that is exactly what these stories have done to me. Zsolt’s story has too.
He helps me become quiet. He makes me want to go down into my mother’s garden and simply sit among the fruit trees. I am constantly rushing. I often feel as though I am not allowed to rest. Of course I could, but there is a voice inside me constantly insisting that I must always be useful, always creating, always moving forward. Otherwise there will be trouble...
And strangely enough, Zsolt’s videos do not argue with that voice. They do not tell me to “slow down”. They simply show me someone who already lives slowly. I love watching his videos because I want to learn more about trees. But perhaps even more because they remind me of something that is so easy to forget when life becomes busy. Not every valuable moment needs to produce an immediate, tangible result. Sometimes twenty minutes of silence does not take something away from life. It gives something back.
Zsolt inspires me to keep looking for that passion in people which rejection, doubt and time have failed to extinguish. Because perhaps that is where our true calling is hiding. And if we learned to look for this in one another, as children, parents, teachers, employers or friends, perhaps many more people could feel what Zsolt can now feel: that they have value.
Of course, the truth is that we all have value. We do not become valuable because someone praises us or recognises our work. And yet, how easily we forget this. We often wait for other people to provide proof of something we should somehow know within ourselves. It is almost as if we have slowly outsourced our sense of self worth to the outside world. A kind word can lift us up, while rejection or criticism can sometimes break us.
Perhaps that is why Zsolt’s words affected me so deeply. Not because he needed other people’s affection, because being appreciated feels good to all of us, but because so many of us can recognise ourselves in that feeling. I am working on this too. My own book helps me with it. As I read other people’s stories again and again, I am also reminding myself that our value does not suddenly come into existence when someone finally notices us. It was there all along. Perhaps the greatest challenge is not proving it to the world, but learning to believe it ourselves.
I could continue all day, because I still have plenty of notes... But I think I will save those for another time. 🙂
Thank you, Zsolt, for speaking about nature with so much love, humility and genuine curiosity. I sincerely hope that what you are creating reaches many more people for years to come. And I hope that one day I will have the chance to meet you in person on one of your walks.
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