Heroes Not Zombies

I love the sight of sunlight through leaves.

Look at these three photos. I think they illustrate a really important lesson for all of us. They illustrate the paradox of difference and sameness. If you’re a botanist, you might look at these three photos and seek to classify them as three different trees. What “families” do they belong to? What are their “names”? But if you just look, you’ll see that whilst each tree has its own characteristics, each leaf is different.

We’re all different too. I think that’s something to celebrate. I despair at the kind of thinking which stops at the level of classification into types, diagnoses, statistics. We need to be able to think beyond that, to see beyond that, to be curious about, fascinated by difference, and to love uniqueness.