I Like Trees

The point of life isn’t happiness. Everyone discovers that, at some point- that all the chasing after toys, titles, fame, money, or template-matching persona are useless at creating a fulfilling life. They do give you plenty to work at in the meantime, but we look on those who have them with envy and pity, a weird combination of scorn and wish. We wish we didn’t have to work so hard for what we want. We envy them the ability to make their own lives easier. At the same time, we recognize that money isn’t everything, fame can be hollow, and being just like our parents isn’t a desirable end.

I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end,” says Jo March, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. We all live like that. It’s the way of things; it’s part of what it is to be human. It’s terrible, but it’s real. We all want to change, and we all want to change right away. We look for the truth of our lives on one page of the copybook, sure that if we can only get it right, it will somehow redeem all those pages of useless ink. Our mistake is in thinking that the blotches and scrawls are useless. Without them, we would never be the better versions we are now. If the current page is clean and carefully done, that’s more than just getting it right. That’s one little leaf in a life of progress, and we can be proud of that not because we got it right finally, but because we are the sort of people who didn’t stop till we got there.

It’s only paper, and what mattered happened off the page.