LESSONS FROM TREES – They're Not Going Anywhere Either

Like most folks, I’ve been doing a lot of walking during the social distancing mandate. Along East River Parkway I pass lots of other walkers. Runners and bikers too. But I pass even more trees…and much closer.

So that’s got me reflecting on what lessons we might learn from trees about life during a pandemic.

First, when a tree finds its reach restricted—say something impinges on its trunk, or it grows up next to a big rock—it just grows right around the obstacle or spreads its roots wider to find what it needs. And deeper too.

   We can do that.

PHOTO: Fred Hsu

If its precious view of direct sunlight gets photo-bombed by some grandstanding cottonwood, a tree simply leans over and reaches for a new window in the canopy. (In fact, I’ve seen some small tropical trees which, driven by the intense competition for light there in the jungle understory, can actually “walk” to a new pool of sunlight.)

   We can do that.

Even if it’s blown over or struck by lightning, a tree doesn’t complain, doesn’t blame, doesn’t feel sorry for itself. It simply finds a way to go on. As long as its roots remain intact, it sends up new shoots through the debris and eventually makes a new tree.

   We can do that.

ILLUSTRATION: BBC News

Trees are not solitary beings. Other than a few species which might take advantage of a weakened neighbor, most support and communicate with each other. They actually share.

   We can do that.

Trees employ strategies to inhibit pathogens, and to isolate damage or disease. After all, most aren’t going anywhere, are they?

   We can do that.

And, perhaps most inspiring, a tree possesses near-infinite patience. It might weather wind storms, droughts, fires and floods, and still it survives. In fact, by fending off the assault it only gets stronger.

   We MUST do that.

SHOOTS – The Terrible, Beautiful Irony of This Spring

Have you been wondering, as have I, what the Universe might be trying to tell us? With this waking-to-a-nightmare pandemic? With our natural environment, even before the C-bug, raging, begging us to let up on our abuse?

What irony. A planet, our precious home, reeling under the effects of our arrogance, our thoughtless excesses; and the same planet reminding us of our utter insignificance. Making it quite clear that it’s not really Mother Earth who’s in danger of extinction; it is us.

You know how I know this? These cool plum-and-green fingers of Spring tell me, reaching, as they will every year, for air, for light, for water. Their fragility belies their power, not just to thrust, slow-motion, through anything in their way, but also to penetrate and somehow calm this piddling mortal’s trembling soul.

WHISPERS OF LEAVES – Heeding the Wisdom of Autumn

How one defines the seasons of one's life is pretty arbitrary. Take fall for example.
I know some 50-somethings who act like they’re already anticipating the end, fading and molding away. And I know a few 80-somethings who still wake up every day expecting change and growth, celebrating life by donning their brightest colors. (I like that quote by baseball icon Satchel Paige, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”)

Nonetheless, each of us reaches a certain age where it’s hard not to realize that there’s more of your life behind you than ahead.

 

 

      I may not be as fresh and flashy as I was
      in my spring…but my roots have grown deep.
      I know who and where I am.

DIVERGING PARALLELS
Just the other day, as I shuffled through some whispering leaves, I was musing on these parallels between this stage of life and this season of the year, and how many of them really apply to me.

Clearly, at least by the measure of years, I’m well into the autumn of my life. And, sure enough, a few of my leaves are withering and dropping.

I may not be as fresh and flashy as I was in my spring, as cocksure as in summer, but a few fires, droughts and storms have sent my roots deep, made me strong. I know who and where I am. You could say I'm just starting to show my best and truest colors.

As autumn comes, at least up here in the North Country, life heads indoors. Sap slows, animals settle into cozy burrows and dens; people, into their homes.

Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in life too? Like they say, don’t our creative juices, our vitality and engagement with the world around us start retreating in our autumn? More and more, as our physical reach diminishes, shouldn’t our lives
turn inward?

This is where the parallels start to diverge for me.

        I want my experience, my knowledge,
        to be like blocks of granite…spread out
        before me, a row of stepping stones to
        more and deeper truths.

STEPPING STONES
No one doubts that the autumn of the year will yield to winter and then, inevitably, to yet another spring. The autumn of one’s life, by most accounts, will not. I’m not sure I can accept that as graciously as a tree, a bear—or a snowbound Minnesotan—accepts its annual four- or five-month dormancy.

I want my experience, my knowledge, to be like blocks of granite, not simply piled up as the foundation of my awareness and ego—or perhaps as a monument to them—but spread out before me, a row of stepping stones to more and deeper truths—about myself and about the cosmos.

If there’s a tendency to think of the fall season as an ending, a winding down,
isn’t it also a beginning? Isn’t it the start of a process of storing, building, putting by the provisions for the long cold winter, and collecting fuel for the inexorable engine of spring?

That’s the way I’d like to see the autumn of my life too. Not giving up, not letting go, but building toward something new, something deliciously unexpected. I don’t know what that might be, but I’ll look forward to it nonetheless.

    Do we really get just one of each life season?

I guess that’s where faith comes in. Of course, no one can prove that some level
of consciousness carries on after the human body’s demise…but neither can
they prove that it doesn’t. That’s the beauty of it; we can choose which reality
to embrace.

So, what do you think? Does the human life / seasons of the year metaphor work for you, comparing one’s lifetime with just one astronomical year? Do we really get just one of each life season? Can’t someone like me, in the fall of his life, embrace that season for all its melancholy reality and still look forward to another spring?

Can’t we always believe in the promise of spring, if not in body, at least in spirit; if not within the power of Nature, perhaps within some inscrutable power of our own?

I don’t know about you, but I live for that promise.

TWO AND GROWING – Thank you!

How time flies when you’re having fun!

Two years ago I started One Man’s Wonder with several goals. First, I wanted to share with others the bits & pieces about Nature and life I’d been writing. Secondly—and this motivation is one I’ve realized only in hindsight—a few thoughts about retirement had begun finding their way in through chinks in my notion of agelessness, and I realized, no matter what my age, I’d be lost without a regular creative outlet.

Finally, at a time when some older folks are furling their wings, drawing in their horizons, I was still wanting to soar, to open up new vistas, meet new friends and discover new and deeper connections with the earth.

While I’ve met every one of those goals, they’re all pretty subjective, which
means that, unlike numeric ends, they can grow and evolve with me. And that’s a
good thing.

To all those who’ve visited One Man’s Wonder— even once—thank you!

ONE TO GROW ON
In my first year of blogging, I met many new friends, both followers and fellow bloggers. My most popular post was about bubbles. And I recorded 14,000 page views. I thought that was amazing.

In my second year, besides building on those subjective goals, I thought it would
be nice if I could add a nice, round 25,000 page views. It’s turned out to be well
over 30,000.

So, to all those who’ve visited One Man’s Wonder—even once—thank you! To those who’ve signed up to be notified of each new post, I’m grateful for your constancy. And to those who’ve stuck their necks out to comment now and then, you’ve helped me realize one more goal: to make One Man’s Wonder less a lectern and more a round-table.

I’m just one of many...who try every day to illuminate the simple, the good, the kind, the wondrous.

I WROTE THE BOOK ON IT
Perhaps the most monumental development of this second year has been the gestation and birth of my  “baby,” my new book, Under the Wild Ginger – A Simple Guide to the Wisdom of Wonder. Seeing it all happen—much of it serendipitously—has been incredibly fulfilling and affirming for me.

But I walk a fine line between giggly excitement at the opportunity to further share my take on seeing life more generously, and my inbred modesty. After all, how self-promoting can one be and still claim to see the world like an innocent, wide-eyed kid?

But I keep coming back to the wonderful words of author and lecturer Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear isn't that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
So that’s what I’ll do; I’ll keep shining my light the best I can, and reminding myself that I’m just one of many. If I do it right my light will join yours and that of so many other thoughtful, talented, generous souls who try every day to illuminate the simple, the good, the kind, the wondrous that dwells in and around us every single day—if only we can see it.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – 101 Little Tips

TIP #28 

Garden.

We come from the earth, and there we return. Gardening celebrates this elemental connection in a most wondrous, reciprocal way.

Growth, flowering, fruiting—it’s all shared, not least the nourishment. The potential, you see, lies in the gardener as much as the seed.

MY DARK CLOUD – Clearing My Dread

I had a fairly normal childhood. I went to school. I played with my friends. I fought with my brother. My parents, while far from doting, were always there for me. They expected the best from me and I think, for the most part, I met those expectations.

Illustration: Katy Farina

But sometime during my adolescence, that carefree little boy developed a dark side. Nothing sinister, just some negative thoughts, self doubts, perhaps a tinge of fatalism. Part of the problem was simply being a teenager. I was experiencing feelings typical of this difficult stage: worries about fitting in, embarrassment over everything my parents did, or didn’t do, frustration that I was neither a child any more nor quite yet an adult. But somewhere in the mix there was also something a bit more sinister, an element of dread—of what, I wasn't sure.

               It seemed everyone I knew 
               was perfectly sure of what they 
               wanted and how they felt.

Those vague, menacing thoughts lurked in a corner of my disposition well into my adult life. I was troubled by a sense of not knowing myself and, whenever I felt I might have an inkling, not trusting even that. It seemed everyone I knew was perfectly sure of what they wanted and how they felt. And, because I wasn’t, I often ended up letting others make decisions that deeply affected my life, and then wondered, “Why's this happening to me?” Sometimes I felt imprisoned by my situation, shackled by a gloomy defeatism.

I wasn’t really even conscious of most of these feelings at a level I could have described, much less that I felt anyone else could possibly have noticed. Still, I knew that, somehow, it stood between me and the full happiness I imagined was possible.

AN ENLIGHTENING QUESTION
In 1979 I and three of my friends formed a men’s group. We met every other week at a different member’s home to share our feelings, brainstorm personal problems, support each other and encourage one another’s personal, professional and spiritual growth.

    I realized that, despite my efforts to minimize 
    it, everyone else could see my affliction.

Over the next few years membership grew to six. We were lucky to have members who not only were unusually sensitive, articulate men, but also had professional experience with group dynamics. A few had gone through personal or relationship counseling. As a result, there was no shortage of activities we could call on to help us better understand and support each other. We even took the iconic Myers Briggs Personality Inventory together.

One exercise we tried was simply called “feedback.” Each of us got a handful of three-by-five cards. We were to write down, for each of the other men, an observation we’d made about him. No judgments, no criticisms, just an observation. We could either sign our cards or remain anonymous.
One of the cards handed to me—signed by Peter, a man I admired very much for his courage and insight—said, “Jeff, why do you always have that dark cloud over your head?”

   I’d managed to keep it stuffed into that uneasy 
   little corner of my psyche, rationalizing 
   that that’s just the way life is.

FINDING, TRUSTING MY LIGHT
The consequences of that question have proven life-changing for me. The immediate impact was a sense of relief, perhaps like that felt by a patient finally getting clarity after suffering for years with an undiagnosed illness. Finding out that it has a name, that it’s not all in your head, finally lets you address the problem and begin treating it. The difference here, though, was that I hadn’t even known I was “sick.” All this time, I’d managed to keep it stuffed into that uneasy little corner of my psyche, rationalizing that that’s just the way life is.

Even more significant than my relief was the realization that, despite my efforts to minimize it, everyone else could see my affliction.

Our men’s group continues to this day (now 33 years old). Peter left the group many years ago, but I see him now and then. I always thank him for having been a mirror to me, for that telling reflection of a burden I’d not fully realized I was bearing. Knowing it was real has allowed me to all but vanquish that self-victimization, that heaviness of heart. Every so often, the dark cloud tries to revisit me, but I’m eventually able to clear the skies by summoning and shining the inner light I’ve come to trust as my one true spirit.

"The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity." – ERICH FROMM