If a tree falls...

Photo-credit :
Andrew Kerr (me)

There is a popular philosophical thought experiment that asks the following:

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

It sparks many debates and drives many different trains of thought. What if a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it... Will we ever know whether it fell or not?

What I loved about the fallen tree as I photographed it was the life metaphor hidden in plain sight. Yes, there's the obvious death metaphor when one looks at the splintered trunk, the dying leaves and branches. To me there was a less obvious one. Almost an anti-metaphor if there can be such a thing.

Yes the tree has fallen but unlike trees, we can stand up again. Unlike the splintered bark, we can heal our wounds. Unlike the dying branches and leaves we can refresh and recreate ourselves.

After an abusive marriage, which had an emasculating effect on me, I could have sworn off women and labelled them "all the same". Instead I stood up and made the choice to see that one woman as a shark in a fish pond. I also made the conscious and deliberate decision to accept and take responsibility for , my part in our failed marriage.

This is the beauty that happens when your tree falls. If you don't make a sound when you fall then no one will be there to criticize how you stand up again.

Yes, sometimes it is very necessary to share with those uplifting individuals who want you to succeed and to regrow into a looming redwood. The trick in this day and age is to find those individuals. Sometimes even our blood would rather see us fail, to keep their position of superiority or rank in the family.

As my darling normally reminds me, "Sometimes it is better to keep your progress to yourself so that,when suddenly you are where you have been silently growing to be in the shadow of other trees, you are too tall and well rooted to be stifled."

I love her wisdom.

We are lost and found in the darkness of the forest canopy that hides our sapling as it struggles in the mottled sunlight to break through. Lost first in the majesty of the other trees who, whether by good fortune or by ordination of a higher power, have grown faster and healthier than those of us who are dubbed "late bloomers". Then found once we find the ray of sunlight which catapults us through the canopy and into glorious sunlight.

The sadness in the story is that there are those of us who, much like the tree in my photo, have fallen and either can't or don't want to get up. Never realizing that if you refuse to get up... You decompose and become fertilizer for the trees around you.

You may be asking yourself, "How can I be fertilizer for others?"

The answer is "in many ways" I offer the two most common ones.

1. Every victor needs to have a loser. Once there is someone lower than you, you appear elevated and so "victorious" over the person.

2. You become a warning to others who begin to follow your path into oblivion.

both paths lead to the growth of those who use them, to your detriment.

By virtue of this, it is far more profitable for the tree, that you are, to stand up. Don't be decomposing wood on the floor of someone else's forest. Rather be the imposing redwood that stands as a testament to perseverance.