My mother and I constantly argued throughout my childhood. It was a common incident for our neighbors to hear yelling coming from my house on an almost weekly basis. But in all truthfulness, I don’t hold any of that against her. Only because due to all of those fights and all of those disagreements I was guided towards the realization of what I truly love and cherish in this world.
My mother was screaming at me one day, she was telling me to break up with my girlfriend because she thought that our relationship was unhealthy for somebody my age. I was about fifteen and of course she was right, but there was no way I would admit that to her, so I left. I walked right out the door and kept walking, blinded by frenzy. What seemed like ten minutes passed before my vision cleared and I stopped, I was in the midst of some woods that I didn’t know. All was silent and still. An infinite array of brown trunks expanded to the horizon. Above me was a sea of green life bellowing as one cohesive organism. I felt disconnected, but I wasn’t afraid at this lost feeling. I liked it. I liked it a lot. The trees calmed me; it was as if they had absorbed my negative energy just as they would do with each of my toxic exhalations. That’s what trees are good at; they take in the bad that society exhales and turn it into something good, something better. The scene instantly relieved me of my burdens; I was clearer and more thoughtful. Frankly, I had known my mother was right, but up until then I wasn’t in a state to admit it. Even with this newfound realization, it was if the new clear-headedness I was experiencing made me keener to fix the problem instead of merely justifying it as a lost cause, and that’s exactly what I did, I fixed the problem. After some amendments to our relationship my girlfriend and I went on to have a happy and healthy duration together lasting quite a long time for a couple our age.
That’s what trees do to people. They let them think clearly and wholly instead of in irrational fragments. They are mediators of conflicts and figures of inspiration to an eventual solution. People never realize their true power, never granting a second glance towards them, but if they were to really stop and look and think about what they are essentially staring at, that same power that the trees possess could be transferred into them.
Personally though, I like that it is a well kept secret. I know that may sound selfish and arrogant, but just like the rest of the things in the world they will lose their magic if exploited. If my trees were to lose their magic, I would no longer have a listener who would never judge me, I would no longer have a friend who would always be there, I would no longer have an open book with infinite pages, I would be just another stress filled cog of the living machine.