It has no choice; its life-cycle is clearly defined from the outset, from its earliest beginnings in March, when it was still coiled within the bud and the wind felt harsh and pitiless. There was the first day when it emerged, sometime in mid-April, exquisite fresh and delicate. There were days of rain, hail and sunshine as it gradually grew and thickened. In May, a caterpillar paid a visit and nibbled, non-fatally, one of its lobes. The summer was balmy and generous. Dust coated it over the windless August days. Over a weekend in September, the first tinge of mortal gold appeared; deepening and darkening every day until the whole leaf was brown and brittle. It held onto its familiar twig though a calm, cold week in early October but was finally shaken off on a blustery Tuesday morning on the 15th. It fluttered down to join thousands of its companions on the pavement, it was kicked about joyously by a child and noisily blown into a heap by a municipal worker; it gradually decomposed, consumed by slugs and microbes; it turned to mulch in November and became an undistinguished part of the soil that winter, where it provided nutrients for - a decade later - an acorn that would take a further twenty years to grow into a mature tree, on whose branches would one day hang leaves much like the one it had once been... We’re seeing - with ideal lucidity - the structure of our own life-cycle and fate, as decreed by nature. Despite our gadgets and bank accounts, we too are little more than fragile leaves waiting for the day we will fall and be reabsorbed into the earth. The timing can vary, but the basic sequence won’t. Our own death, which we feel as the deepest affront, is perfectly inevitable. We too are part of nature, which is as pitiless as it is beautiful - and always awesomely indifferent to our longings and cries.
This article is from The School Of Life
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