Defiance

Two weeks ago, a tulip poplar fell on the transformer near us, knocking out the power to our house. BGE came and sliced down the offending tree, limb by limb, segment by segment, until the trunk of the tree cleared the wire and was a threat no more. The bulk of this tree now lay scattered about in chunks upon the ground. It will be my inauguration, my initiation, into the joys of a chain saw.

While I have been waiting for that dear acquisition (a friend, seeing my difficulty in acquiring one in my last outing, has graciously offered to give me his, so my search may be over), the tree has been busy blooming. It is perhaps overly charitable, if not outright indulgent, of me to call it a tree still, for it is, as I said, mostly pieces of lumber strewn about the ground.

Still, remarkably, despite its amputated condition, this tree, or several of its branches at any rate, have refused to die. In the two weeks since they hit the ground, they have brought forth leaves (that was painful enough to see) and then, in an act of reckless abandon, put forth delicate yellow blossoms. It is indeed a sad sight, or depending on how melancholy you are feeling at the moment, a heart-breaking sight, like reading a story about a hero who dies too soon, or a love that cannot be.

To put an anthropomorphic twist on this (which is not to attribute human characteristics to the tree, but to attribute the tree's characteristics to us), we can ask: is it benighted innocence that allows a dying branch to burst forth in color? Or stubborn denial of the inevitable end? Or defiance, which says that af al pi khen, despite it all, despite the end that was never contested, only hastened in this falling, I will bring beauty into this world for as long as I can?

If it were up to me, I would choose defiance. For it seems to me that it is this sense of defiance that serves us best. The world can be dark and challenging, even as it can be brilliant and joyous. But because we choose to believe in the triumph of joy and goodness, we must seek to vanquish the urgings of darkness. And we do that best through acts of defiance both large and small.

When we are weak, down and out, on our last legs, even with our last breath, we must still strive to bring forth small bursts of beauty as our one last hurrah, our final legacy.

It might cheer our loved ones, and help keep them going. What else can we do?