A leaf falls to the ground and I look at it. The more I look at the tree the more leaves fall off and I cannot help but think that maybe my stare is forcing this tree’s nakedness. I find myself mourning over a loss that only I alone perceive as such. Then I catch myself doing so, hurling my feelings, my own sympathies and tragedies onto the tree that does not suffer like me. I find myself hurling emotions at people near and far, only to see that I am the mother of that suffering; I birthed it out of an unquiet mind and a spineless fear of the unknown.
How often do we beat ourselves up over not more than a thought? How often do we spare everyone else but ourselves from punishment? What is the programing behind it? What is that fear?
We go about calling ourselves and our fears by new names, because once something has a name to it it becomes slightly more familiar, our weariness of it diminishes. We swallow our pills and smoke our cigarettes, we drink our alcohols and green teas, we mix it up, and go on diets and detoxes. We try to clean ourselves of sorrow and shame, our toxins keep building and we see nothing else but the need to rise above it and abolish every uneasiness and dirty thing about us. We do it alone, and then we do it together, because having company helps us feel less alone, as though life will spare us some change and give us some benefit; the more of us the merrier and at least we get to have some fun and somebody to talk to.
The living gets serious and then it gets old, we get sick of it and it gets sick of us and we cringe at the thought of doing it all over again and so we change and hope to fix ourselves and everything around us. We dwell on thoughts and we get too close to truths that are sometimes convincing enough and others absolutely dubious.
The truth at the end is that we are just passing through, empty handed at first and empty handed at last. You can either find an immense freedom in that or a life sentence of questioning and resistance. What happens before we awaken and what happens after we go for our eternal sleep must not burden us because we already live life seeking burdens and labels so that we feel some semblance of value in a world so much bigger and stronger than we are.
And so the tree stays still, and though I wish it could break fee of its roots and come crashing to the ground mourning its leaves and its lost colors, it does not move. It lives to withstand yet another winter and it hopes to blossom yet another spring as it stays still and lives, well rooted despite my emotions. Perhaps a lesson is to be learned here, yet again maybe my mind needs to stay per-occupied. I must find a name for this tree, a master or a sign of the times, it doesn’t move, but I do.
I make my steps across the new path, little do I realize that I also left a part of myself with the leaves behind. There are storms to be weathered and suns to be bathed under; life awaits and I keep on.
Uplifting Letters 