I showed you a photo of a wounded rock the other day to illustrate how whatever impacts our lives changes us forever. Here’s another similar image. This time it’s a tree.
Look at the shape of this tree! What’s happened here? It’s quite extraordinary. I’ve never seen such a dramatic “folded” form within a tree. What caused this? We’ll never know.
But it’s changed this tree forever. This astonishing fold is way more than the twists and turns in a ordinary day. Perhaps for that reason it makes me think it’s relevant to this time of pandemic and physical distancing where our societies, our lives, have closed up.
I’m sure we are all preparing to write the next chapter of our stories, but, first of all, it seems, we’ve closed the book. At least while we close our eyes and rest.
The time will come, soon, maybe, when we pick up the book again, open it up to the page we last read. Will the next chapter be a continuation of the story so far? With the same characters, the same plot, the same themes? Maybe not.
Maybe the characters will have changed. Some will have grown in importance, some will have shrunk. Yet others will have disappeared.
I suspect this twist in the plot is a big one.
Time to re-consider, re-evaluate, and make new choices. We might have thought we had a good idea of the way the plot was developing but, whoah! we weren’t expecting this!
Exciting, huh?
Or just plain scary?
What do you think? There’s no getting away from it. The story is going to change now. There’s no going back. Just forward. Maybe we’ll pull some of the characters and themes out of the story so far and develop them in completely unexpected ways. Maybe there’ll be some equally dramatic twists ahead. I think it’s up to us. You and me, and everyone we know.
What shall we create now? What shall we say? What shall we do?
Thought provoking post.