I think this is one of the most remarkable trees I ever saw. I don’t know what the story is here. I don’t know if the original trunk was damaged, became diseased, or was deliberately cut down by some people. But what you can see here is the remaining stump of the tree, surrounded by new growth on all sides. So it’s like a ring of trees around the original one. I can’t prove it but I bet these are not separate trees at all. As best I understand what happens in situations like this, all of this growth stems from the one plant. It is, in fact, one tree, with several trunks.
This image sparks off two trains of thought for me.

The first is about resilience. Living organisms have astonishing powers of resilience. Of course, they aren’t immortal, but when you do see recovery the shape and direction it takes can be pretty surprising. I saw that many times with patients. There were always those who didn’t just “become well again”, but who were so changed by the experience of their illness, that as they healed, they grew in completely different directions to the ones they had taken up to becoming sick. A few months, or years, further one, they were truly transformed. The impact of the illness might still show in some ways, but the changes in their personalities, choices, behaviours, ways of thinking and living, were so profound that it was hard to see they were, in fact, “the same person”.

The second is about identity. That phrase, “the same person”, is always one which gets me wondering about identity. I read an article online this morning about the Celts. It described the controversy which exists between academics about just how the Celts were, who they were, where they lived and where they came from. What amazed me about that piece was just how widespread the “Celtic” peoples appear to have been in the past, and whilst there is debate about whether the Western Celts moved East, or vice versa, and whether or not, the people we call “Celts” were all “really Celts” is something I find much less interesting. Rather than falling down the rabbit hole of identity and its origins, I found myself wishing again that people would accept how inter-related we all are….all we humans. These attempts to divide us up into neat categories and then challenge each other on whether or not we qualify to be a member are both harmful and sad.

Yes, it might be interesting to trace some of the threads which have intertwined to weave our individual tapestries of self, but can we give up on all this unhelpful categorisation and attempts to separate and divide? Can we see instead that every one of us has connections, past, present and future, which wind their way across all such artificial, imaginary boundaries, which we call “categories”?

Our connections, what we share now, what our ancestors shared before, what we will share in our common future, all matter so much more than all this putting everything and everyone into separate, labelled boxes.
After all every one of us is changing every moment of every day, and with enough time passing, those changes can take on the significance of transformations.