i am a tree . . . . .

what words come to your head when you see this picture?


-pause-


-think of them-


-visualize them-


i have loved this picture for a long time now, had it framed and have it hanging in my room, but i never understood why.

well one day, i was hanging around after work at my office when this understanding hit me. to set the backdrop, our office is on the second floor and we have two windows, and one window looks out over the parking lot. in that room is the most comfortable chair in the office, an old lounge chair that faces the window.

so this late afternoon day, everyone has left, i sit down, put my ipod on and just stare into the gray, empty and dreary overcast day that it was. well something i had never noticed caught my eye. there is a tree just outside the window, skying above the building, just left of my window. it has been cold for some while, so the tree is stripped bear of its leaves, fruits or other colorful life.

it looks dead.

but its not. its actually quite alive, but there is no sign of visible life. if you cut the tree, you would find green blood flowing through it, and if you left the cut alone, you would find it would heal. so bland, so dull, so empty, yet such a beautiful view of survival.

thre tree cannot sustain life if it keeps its leave through the winter, especially since it is placed in the frozen tundra of minnesota. it sheds itself of the extra, unnecessary for living parts of it so that i can bloom another year.

that is me.

totally me. even though my color, my life-giving leaves, all my visual signs of life are gone, i still have life beating within me, sustaining me through the winter of my life. i've gone through many difficult times in my life, where i felt abandoned, alone, fenced in, hopeless, but yet i never felt dead. i have always lived through it and found better life on the other side through time, where i have been able to blossom again.

what a unique time now, after multiple inches of snow falling again last night reminding me of the ongoing winter that never seems to end, but yet a holiday in which we take time to remember life that was sacrificially given to us. there is life in midst of lifelessness. just feel the beating life within you, know the eternal life given to you, and receive the greatest gift ever given, a gift of true life.

Source: Solitude by David Lorenz Winston