The road to becoming is a road of intention and trust, of course there is effort involved as well as time too, but these are only secondary.

Intention is the Key. As is definiteness of purpose and a burning desire, necessary to stimulate your God given purpose in the creation and access your creative faculties/and or calling (we all have one).

The tree does not become a squirrel. It's intention, even though rudimentary is on become an Oak Tree SOMEDAY. It my take a lot of time, effort and obstacle to complete this purpose, but it is after all THE TREE'S PURPOSE.

NOTHING can stop PURPOSE, because it is grounding in the intergrating goodness of the perfecting God that knows the will, and does not condemn the timeline or the process necessary it takes to arrive at the devine benift of the intention and calling. Unlike human beings who often see each others purpose in their own terms and do not recognize the slow perfecting purposes of the unity of all through the seemingly choatic world that is.

The tree knows ITS PURPOSE, which is the starting point to all achivement, it does not try to become a cat, It does not worry if the cat matures and fulfills more of its duty in a shorter period of time.
We all all equals in the eyes of God, and we can be noone esle than the person we were meant to be.

Emerson said,

"There arrives a point in every man's education ( i.e. drawn out growth from within) when he arrives at the conclusion that to envy is ignorance, and that imitation is suicide (which it is)

Also he said the following,

Trust THYSELF, every heart beat true to the VIBRANT STING (GOD'S INFINITE INTELLIGENTS) accept the place of devine providence for great men have alway done so to become the genius of their age"

(above is not an exact quote but from my memory)

Desire, Intention and Being True to Yourself are much more important than what other think, or how long it may take you to arrive. Because we all arive sooner or later through intetion, when we trust ourselves and develope ourselves, whenever or however long that may take initially take.

Dewey