Springs to Mind -or- Why is a hare like a deciduous tree?

On my balcony, I am at eye level with the top of a 20’ tall tree.

It is winter – well, March – and it has no leaves.

{Wandering minds want to know:

Is the tree embarrassed when it loses all its leaves?

Do the other trees laugh and make fun of it?

anyway, back to the story…}

It is almost Spring, and this tree is absolute potentiality.

Behind it, across the street, is an evergreen of about the same height.

Ever. Green.

It doesn’t know what it is to not have leaves;

to be barren and dormant.

It strikes me that there are people like this, people I know well.

The evergreens are steady and grounded and sure;

they change, but in slow and small ways.

I am decidedly not an evergreen.

I’m the tree that is a slave to the seasons.

In my metaphorical Spring, which happens any time that I am inspired by a new idea, or a new project, or a new career path, or when my life changes in drastic ways that require me to redefine myself – my potential is actualized into the physical world, like leaves sprouting from branches.

The following Fall, after a project is done or a goal is reached,

I will shed the fruits of my labors (again)

and lie in wait for the spark of a new inspiration (again)

when, unfailingly, Spring will arrive (again)

and I will burst forth with life (again.)

Mind you, I’ve never counted, but I bet I could do this at least twenty times in one day. And so I begin to suspect that I am more like a forest than a single hyperactive, overachieving, mad-as-a-hatter tree. Can you imagine the mess a tree like that would make? Now that I think of it, that could explain the current state of my studio.

I am reminded somehow of the Tortoise and the Hare fable.

The evergreen is like the tortoise.

The deciduous tree is the hare.

The hare has such a bad rap; perhaps rightfully so,

as the story shows him to be arrogant and mean.

But I’m thinking of these creatures in general terms,

not specifically the ones from the tale.

The hare will move through life quickly, it is his nature.

I suppose this opens him to more mistakes;

more trials and humiliations, as well as rewards;

more death/rebirth cycles, like the tree.

Perhaps the tortoise does win sometimes,

but I am certain the hare does too.

Isn’t the journey the destination anyway?

In which case, who wins is a moot point.


So... what kind of tree (or creature) are you?