Delicate Balance in Isolation
The human world is in a precarious place these days. Our capacity to reason makes people believe that, because we are capable and our species has the unique ability to change its environment to suit our needs, we should be experiencing life better than we are. We have come to believe there should be some permanence in our lives, relegating our ability to adapt our needs to the environment in which we live to an inconceivable inconvenience of our ancestors.
Most of the natural world has no such capacity. Either you 'bloom where you are planted' or you die. Sometimes in the natural world the season for blooming is fraught with peril...perhaps a pestilence, or a change in the climate occurs and the bloom fails, but life goes on. Maybe future blooms will come, maybe they won't. Maybe the future blooms have been hindered by the current failure, or maybe they will be stronger because of adaptation. It is hard to know what will come with any certainty.
Nature seems to know that life is really about a series of moments well lived. Using the resources needed for survival, but not to the point that their depletion prevents future growth. Every measure is about symbiosis and survival.
Cherry blossoms have long been associated with the concept of destiny or karma. Their exquisite, delicate beauty is fleeting, much like a life well lived. This bunch, at the end of a long branch, is isolated from other bunches, but it's magnificent beauty continues unabated for as long as the bloom will last. Then, one day, the flowers will begin to wilt, their petals will fall making a beautiful carpet below the tree, and the branch will become just like any other tree covered in green leaves for the remainder of the summer. But life will go on.
Delicate Balance in Isolation
The human world is in a precarious place these days. Our capacity to reason makes people believe that, because we are capable and our species has the unique ability to change its environment to suit our needs, we should be experiencing life better than we are. We have come to believe there should be some permanence in our lives, relegating our ability to adapt our needs to the environment in which we live to an inconceivable inconvenience of our ancestors.
Most of the natural world has no such capacity. Either you 'bloom where you are planted' or you die. Sometimes in the natural world the season for blooming is fraught with peril...perhaps a pestilence, or a change in the climate occurs and the bloom fails, but life goes on. Maybe future blooms will come, maybe they won't. Maybe the future blooms have been hindered by the current failure, or maybe they will be stronger because of adaptation. It is hard to know what will come with any certainty.
Nature seems to know that life is really about a series of moments well lived. Using the resources needed for survival, but not to the point that their depletion prevents future growth. Every measure is about symbiosis and survival.
Cherry blossoms have long been associated with the concept of destiny or karma. Their exquisite, delicate beauty is fleeting, much like a life well lived. This bunch, at the end of a long branch, is isolated from other bunches, but it's magnificent beauty continues unabated for as long as the bloom will last. Then, one day, the flowers will begin to wilt, their petals will fall making a beautiful carpet below the tree, and the branch will become just like any other tree covered in green leaves for the remainder of the summer. But life will go on.