The caravan of life moves through various paths. It is also subject to many bumps and pits. Some use the pits and bumps to make complaints and some use these to learn to navigate, to drive and to foresee.
We wake up in this world, take roots, develop trunk and gain foundation. Our promoters (read parents) keep nourishing the root to make the trunk strong. The journey carries on and the tree makes efforts to touch the sky. While still in pre spring days the weight of our tree is just us and our trunk (self). Unaware of the future fruits and blossoms to be, we can chalk out our own growth, the trunk able to stretch in any direction, be is upward or sideways. The moments of glee, of unrestricted freedom and the seasons of life sans responsibility are the time when our roots can hold, strengthen and venture out. But often we are busy watching other species in the garden blossom, flower and grow, always wondering where they got the color and nature blessed shapes from. If we had bothered to glance down on the earth creepers or the wild spouts on ground we could have been proud of the natures blessing endowed on us.
In our races we always look at the ones running ahead of us and the milestone ahead of them, not at the countless running behind or alongside us.
Growing up into summer, life takes hold of responsibilities and realizations. Cool mornings and playful enjoyable evening of spring lives are taken over by hot and demanding times of summers. Ahead of us the realities stare in the face. And then the branches of the tree that has blossomed with flowers, in summer starts to be laden with fruit. Now the nourishment for self has to be shared between the trunk (self) and the growing weight of the branches. The sight of spring buds blossoming into fruit is always a joy, and only the firm rooted are fully able to sustain and nourish such fruit. For the firm rooted and uniformly branched the sun instead of being a scorcher becomes a support. Often the trees with frail branches drop, making a burden of their fruit and flowers.
Some of us evaluate our flowers and fruits with other trees and plants in the garden, often missing the individuality of each species and each plant in particular bouquets. We tend to overlook the unique supplications and opportunities that are given to each individual; no two flowers in a garden look alike even if they were of the same set. Then you see some of the garden species trying to grow at the expense of others, encroaching and overriding, but the gardener often weeds out the plantations that try to invade on other crops and their opportunities. Summer provides ample opportunity and means for the fruit to get ripe, the flowers to blossom in full color and the garden gives ample space for all to branch out and reach out. Some people in order to reach out in inverse directions forget their aim. Instead of aiming to reach out to the sky and grow with sunshine, they escape to delusions and are condemned to darkness of shades and irrelevance. Such people are the faithless. The real test of a tree comes when during high winds a tree become submissive to nature and bows down to the will of God. Stiff and arrogant trees are swept away by strong currents, uprooted from their not so firm roots.
God has given us bounties of nature and of earth, which we should learn in our prime time, our springs how to connect to with roots, and grow on.
Autumn closes in and each variety gets a chance to be plucked, chosen and marked for new nurseries. In the garden the enchanting flowers make it to exquisite shows, are admired and the delicious fruit to appreciating places. The Master eyes of the plucker make no mistake in identifying a toiled produce. The tree that has used its spring well in spreading its roots firmly, to blossom and grown on the opportunities of the summer surely finds pride in having priority in the hands of Master. When the tree has given its produce in the autumn sunset, the only thing it holds on now to be its trunk and the leftover leaves. The branches having emptied, the fruit having been tasted, the leaves start to turn golden and wither. A healthy tree even does not allow the withered leaves to go waste, being consumed by the earth to feed, to nourish to replenish.
And then cold winds of winter start blowing, leaving the tree and its trunk exposed. And faraway the sound of an axe felling trees can be heard. The garden shivers, there is a murmur.
Those who are not prepared for winters often are the ones who shudder most in the cold. The axe is already identifying and grading the trees. As the axe finds its way to other areas of the garden, some chopped trees can be seen having been segregated to be used for burning while some are neatly stacked for replanting.
The pyre that is lit by the diseased trees will surely be re ignited by more diseased ones next fall, but the strong and clean trees that have been stacked for replanting will again find their way into the world.
What do we want to become, the wood that is felled and burnt or the tree that is marked clean, noble by its virtue and is replanted?

(Saad’ut is a blogger from Kashmir)

Lastupdate on : Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 IST