Like mighty warriors locked arm in arm around the city's gates, these Douglas Fir trees stand guarding the harbours and inlets of the Island, reminding man of his insignificance. Oh, we can mow them down with chainsaws, but who suffers most? It strikes me that humans cannot stand to be reminded of our own unimportance in the great march of time.
As a species, we do not like change. That is, unless we are controlling the changes. We reflect this thought process in our words. We speak fearfully of the natural forces which bring about change, when we should be speaking words of welcome. Change should be made welcome for it makes us grow and become wiser. But fear predominates instead. Look for example at the words spoken about global warming. So many words of fear, and yet we have no more idea of what is happening than a clam does of whether it is in the ocean or in someone’s aquarium in Fairbanks or perhaps Rome. We simply assume the worst instead of looking for the good in it.
It comes to my mind that it is this mindset that makes us war with our world. We resist the things that we cannot control. The endless march of time is one. We measure time, we label it, we regulate it, and we dread it’s passing. We dread it because we fear it, and we fear it because it takes us ever onward toward another uncontrollable event in our lives…our death.
So we war against it. Instead of accepting that it will keep marching on whether or not we permit it to, and yet knowing we can do nothing to ever begin to slow it, we then try to change it’s effect on ourselves. What I ask, is all this fear of aging? Aging is simply a process where we learn more of the lessons that life teaches us – or at least we should – by having had the time to experience more things. Knowing too, that we will not have enough time to experience all life has to offer, we can then gain even more knowledge by studying the lives and lessons of others. Since the one and only thing in this world that God has given us complete and utter control over is our own minds and thoughts, why do we spend so much energy fighting that over which we have no control? And in the process of resisting the passage of time, we waste even more of that which we are allotted in the first place.
I admire societies which honour those who have survived long in this world. Unfortunately I can not say this of my own. In my society we take our elders and lock them away as if there was shame to grey hair and wisdom. We act as if failing bodies are proof of dimming minds. We lock away our grey haired citizens at the height of their wisdom, and then farm our youngsters off into the arms of strangers instead. In some other societies –Native Indian for example – elders are revered and given the task of teaching the youngsters the history and wisdom of the people. I think one of the saddest things that stick in my mind from the years in the Yukon is the memory of in the dark and ice-fog of a frigid minus fifty degree morning, seeing crying young children being put into a still frozen car, while Mom and Dad argue about being late for their work because of having to ‘get the kids to daycare.’ How sad.
But through it all, the ever changing environment, and the wayward warring changes of man, the Douglas Fir trees stand. They pass no judgment, they hold no opinion that I know of. They just stand timeless as the centuries pass and watch the endless struggling procession of human beings pass beneath their towering limbs. With their roots intertwined one with the next, each individual tree gains even more security from the young and the old of It’s own species.
The lesson here is that no matter how big we are, or how long we’ve been around, we still need to work together – not stand alone.
