Have you ever walked in a park, and get this strange feeling that the trees are actually watching you? Or maybe you have taken a long run and by the end of your effort, you felt the need to raise your hand and softly feel the leaves of a branch bending over your head?
No, you haven't? Well, it is no secret I get weird like that sometimes, however the idea of trees bearing consciousness brings me so much comfort lately.
Let's assume it's true. The trees are witnesses to the same events as we are. They just don't act upon them. Their roots don't allow them to move, to react, to run away from the changes in their environment. But they can enjoy a bright day, get rid of their thirst when it rains, fear the thunder, enjoy a breeze but also be in terrible pain when a strong wind breaks some of their weakest branches... and the only thing they can do about it? Endure, wait...
Now, for the average human being - including myself of course, this is the ultimate nightmare. Complete loss of freedom. Being obliged to change? Accept that the nice breeze on my face will turn into a vicious cold slap...? And be able to do nothing about it but turn the other cheek? Oh, no way Jose. I want to be able to fight, to swim against the current, to drown if I have to, die trying.
But in the end, that's what we do right? We die trying. Trying to live the life we prefer. And though time could be our healer, it becomes our curse. Try to do something exciting or important with your time and notice how fast it runs out on you. Try to stay in one place doing nothing like those Yogis in India and time becomes endless.
It still may seem like a torture, living forever like that, just observing and not interfering or influencing your environment, but the thing is... Our true influence and control over the events to come is so limited that if we could observe ourselves from a distance, we would most likely see us acting hysterically and funny in an outdated scenario. Just like Charlie Chaplin or Stanley and Oliver in those black and white movies that once used to be a big thing, but now kids barely recognize them. Even they could not leave something eternal behind.
On the other hand, trees... Trees don't die. Unless we kill them or some bug kills them, trees can live centuries. They live from their own produce, since their leaves and mature fruits when "they die" they fall on the ground and become nutritional elements for the tree, and this goes on and on... so every single component either grows or gets used. Now, one could say that this is the perfect analogy for the concept of energy balance, right?
But there's more than that to it, bacause the tree's existence is not in vain, nor do they live that long for the sake of living. Trees produce oxygen and thus every other living organism depends on the trees' existence.
Should the trees have consciousness, wouldn't they be considered beings equal to saints, or angels, or mothers and fathers that opted for the dull stable life in order to provide to their families? Families they created...
But yet we cut off the trees every day, we let them burn and destroy, just like we have burned and destroyed all stable and boring values of the past thinking that an ordinary life is not becoming.
I am not pointing the finger to anyone but myself. Because it has always been my principle, the phrase written on a rock to be the water or the fire but never one of the trees or the immovable rocks that get beaten up by the wind and the waves.
Yet, I don't want to die.
I made this painting (acrylics on canvas) as a reminder of what I truly owe to be, and that fearless is the one who is not trying to avoid pain but the one who has the means to endure it.
