We are all trees.
This post includes some ideas from my religion specifically. Don't get turned off. I promise I'm going somewhere with this. Trust me.
In the Norse sources we have, in one of the oldest stories, the gods are said to have crafted the first people, Ask and Embla, from driftwood, or from tree trunks in the forest. Ask means Ash (tree) in English, and Embla means, you guessed it, Elm.
Thousands of years later, we found that (from various sources) we are remarkably similar to most forms of life. We share about 60% of DNA with trees. That's wild! Over half of who we are is exactly the same as the scratchy brown bark things with green hair outside.
What is a tree's purpose? To live. To die. To reproduce in between those. Trees can't move, they can't speak, they can't love. Trees breathe. Trees eat. Trees live.
There are vast forests across many countries and over much of the world. Each forest is different, with different geography, different climate, different animals living there, different rocks, different history. Similarly, trees are all different. This one has a knot, that one has been hacked down partially and left. This one has no leaves. That one has lived for hundreds of years.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Trees come in all sorts of colors, shapes, sizes, thicknesses, ages, and tons and tons of other variations. Some people study trees their whole lives. Some people surround themselves with trees because they just like them. Some find meaning in the trees beyond how trees present.
And trees do present themselves vastly differently, don't they? But they didn't choose that. A Cherry tree doesn't choose to be one, nor does a Birch. Trees don't choose where they grow up, they don't choose their ancestors, they don't choose to be killed by dryrot or an axe or age or termites.
Humans can move. We have a huge advantage in that. We move freely. We migrate. We think. But we also have roots. We don't choose how we look. We don't choose where we grow up. We don't choose how others get to see us.
So why, I ask you, do we judge others on things they cannot change? We don't hate a tree from Russia because it is in Russia. We don't think trees in Mexico City are somehow worse than trees in Wyoming. A Pine in Arizona is different, but no better than, one in Virginia. So why, pray tell, must we hate others so much for being different? Why is a tree with a knot, or a bigger tree, or a darker tree worse than any other? Why would you hate a purple tree, or a fern for that matter?
We share 60% of our DNA with trees. We share 99.9% with each other. We are all different. We all look different. We all live different places. None of us are better than any other.
Stop acting like we're so incredibly distant. Stop hating someone for something they can't control. Stop acting like we can't get along. We all live in forests of humans. We need to. We want to. And it's good that we do. Don't listen to the tribalism in each of us. We are all ultimately the same.
We are all trees.