Heroes Not Zombies

Living organisms are not simple (no, not even the simplest of them!). Look at this tree. How could you begin to trace its beginning and its end? Where do its roots begin and end? Where does the trunk begin and end? What makes the branches emerge exactly where they do, and what determines the direction they will grow and distance they will stretch?

And, to think, this tree began as a single seed. How absolutely impossible to predict the exact shape and size of this tree from an examination of that seed.

We like to chop reality into pieces, calling this a part, and that, another part, as if there are clear divisions between what we are calling “parts”. But that’s just what our brains do. Specifically, that’s how we engage with the world from the perspective of our left cerebral hemisphere. That hemisphere was never intended to function alone, and all its hyper-focus, all its re-presentation, all its re-cognising, labelling and categorising, was always meant to be passed back to the right hemisphere for re-contextualisation, for re-absorption into the whole, so we could see the connections, the relationships, the ever changing, developing flow of the world.

I’m convinced that the world is a more satisfying place, that life is better, when I open my mind to awe, to wonder. I’m convinced that the world becomes meaner and more shallow when I reduce it to “things”, “objects” and utility.

How amazing it is to really stand and see a tree, a single tree, to gaze, and to wonder at its origins, its history, its connections and its here and now reality. How amazing.