Heroes Not Zombies

I took this photo because the shape of that tree is so strange. I’d never seen a tree grow in such a peculiar way. When I looked at the photo later I thought the two trees together looked like a pair of legs. It makes me smile every time I look at it now, imaging I caught an “Ent” running!

I return to this photo again and again. Look at the twists and turns taken by this tree! I wonder what the story is. What happened each time the trunk changed direction. Although it might not be so obvious our lives are like this. Every event we encounter, every experience we have, every choice we make, changes us, takes us off in a particular direction. The twists and turns of our everyday lives give our lives the distinct, unique shapes which develop as we grow.

But this photo makes me think of something else too….the dynamic uncertainty at the core of reality. Everything changes all the time. Living creatures change most of all. The changes are co-created by ourselves and the environments in which we live. And these changes are unpredictable in detail.

The more closely we consider an individual life, the more we understand them, but the more we realise we cannot predict the future.

Who could have described the shape of this tree we see now from its appearance as a young sapling? Who could have known which direction the trunk was going to take at each of those twists and turns?