I think I have learned one very critical concept in the last 5 years. The notion that life restores slowly. Organic life does not repair, recover, and restore quickly. Organic life does most everything slowly.
I have a tree we bought and put in the backyard. This was not a cheap purchase. I never knew how much trees cost, and I realized when I walked onto the tree lot that this was a rich man’s sport. Buying Trees. The reason is quite simple. Trees mature slowly and it can take a life time to enjoy the fruits of your landscaping effort. So people will pay money to shortcut that maturity.
My neighborhood is about 18 years old. That is when they planted the trees, and there were a lot of them. About 10 different species in total, planted in rows on every street and passage way. At first this neighborhood looked like a barren landscape of stucco and haunting similarity. Now the place is beautiful. People take prom pictures here now. The reason is that the organic life in this place has matured. The trees, in human terms, are in their teenage years and growing lush and quite literally full of life.
My new tree started to suffer. I thought it was because of the heat and it was not getting enough water. So I watered the tree more and more. It got worse and so bad that leaves started falling quickly. I was actually drowning the tree. So I scaled back the watering, and soaked the tree every three days instead giving time for the soil to drain. I think promptly forgot about it. The tree looked miserable and so was I.
Then slowly the tree began to recover. At first it was hardly noticeable. Some new growth on the end of branches at the bottom closes to the roots. Then new branches started to appear at the top. Then what seemed like a sudden explosion, the tree had new bright green growth everywhere. This actually took about 6 months, but when you come and go fleetingly you do not see the progressive changes.
The same has occurred with me. Suffering from a small irritation in my hip, suffering from a bad attitude, I decided to start making some course corrections. Progress is frustratingly slow. However, from the outside you see a slow and gradual change. Improvements are happening, they are just very subtle. Human life, as it seems, is just as organic as that tree. We restore slowly, just like nature. We mimic the life around us with surprising accuracy, because effectively we are life itself.
Guy
