The tree of life

The tree of life: Several years ago, I planted a bottlebrush tree in my garden. My love for the tree is inexorably linked with its deep vermillion flowers which have been the show-stoppers in my arrangement in the living room every morning. However, much to my may, this winter I noticed that for the first time the tree had shed all its leaves and the branches too were drying up. Soon, all that remained was an unsightly trunk jutting out of the earth. The gardener pronounced the tree ‘dead’ and made arrange ments to have it uprooted. I refused. Finally, we reached a compromise to just cut off the top and leave the stump as a garden seat.  While pottering around the garden last week, to my pleasant surprise, I noticed green shoots sprouting from  the side of the stump. Nature resurges against all odds. Now, as I sit watching my tree slowly coming back to life, I cannot help but wonder if it is a metaphor for life and how it applies to the way we see the world. We too, like the gardener, are unable to see the ‘life-force’ that exists in the things around us. While all of us had given up on the ‘dead’ tree, invisible to the naked eye, was the life in it that hadn’t. The example of the tree is a lesson for us not to live fatuously and allow a few extenuating circumstances to deter us from looking at our own inner magnificence and resilience. Look at it this way, did the ‘life’ in the tree give up because of one harsh winter? Did it give up when it was reduced to a mere stump? With a similar resolve can’t we too bounce back from every adversity and celebrate the triumph of our grit over the odds of destiny?  To face the adversities of life we need to push through our fears and limiting beliefs and engineer a positive mind-set that should constantly remind us that ‘this too shall pass’ and that good times are around the corner.