Life Always Wins
Reflections From My Neighborhood
Death might just be a figment of our imagination. Or a failure of our imagination. In fact, Life never ends, it only takes different forms.
Somewhere nearby, a tall old oak toppled in the unusually strong winds. It laid across the street at a ninety degree angle from normal. Its’ upper branches were tangled in the hedge on the neighbor’s yard, while its’ enormous root ball was fully exposed on its home lawn. It was sawed, chopped and chipped in short order, and so-called owners and their neighbors mourned as they clear the debris.
I chatted with one of my neighbors yesterday. I’d seen the tree service at his house down the street over the weekend. The loud chippers groaned for several hours on a Saturday morning and I asked if he’d had one of the trees in his backyard removed. I hoped he’d say ‘no’, because I hate to see a tree go down. He and his wife don’t seem like the kind of people who would randomly chop down a tree, unless it was diseased or a danger, and I hoped my assumptions about their character wouldn’t be disproved.
So I was relieved when he did say, no, no trees were removed, just a major trimming, including thinning the large oak in his backyard. I had to get a permit from the city to do the pruning, he told me, because the tree was so tall. Then he smiled. It’s a volunteer, he said, sounding proud. It grew from an acorn that a squirrel or jay planted there, and my wife and I saw it’s first sprout soon after we moved in. We just let it grow, he said, because it was in a good location in the yard.
Have a good walk, he said as we parted.
I walked home feeling a sense of contentment. A proud homeowner, and a healthy tree.
In my neighborhood, an oak tree went down, while another had already sprouted. With the help of squirrel or jay, the life of a tree continued. No, it was not the exact same tree, not in the same location. But it demonstrated a continuation of Life.
And therein lies our failure of imagination. The importance, in this case, is not the singular tree, or person. The connection is the continuity from one being to another, across time and space.
And no, not every tree has an acorn that successfully grows, just as not every human has a child to carry on their DNA. But Death catches up to individuals, while Life has continuity between and among the living. Death may chase Life down the generations, but Life is always many steps ahead.
In the bigger picture, Life always wins.