Persistence?

From time to time as I walk through the woods, I’ll find trees like this one: growing out of walls, in between decaying sidewalk cracks, or even growing through chain link fences. It always puts me in mind of persistence, of trees’ ability to just keep growing, slowly but surely, in the face of obstacles that would make me give up.

And maybe that’s what’s going on, maybe that’s the moral of these images. But today I had another thought. Trees lives are rich and full and almost completely alien to humans. We inhabit the same world but little about our lives, our beings, are similar. So what is the point of ascribing motives based on our lived experiences?

It seems more likely to me that trees, these magnificent entities with which we share the planet, function on levels that work for them, not in subservience to our limited human understanding. What I label as “persistence” is simply an outward manifestation of the lives of trees, unmediated by human intelligence.

That feels in keeping with human arrogance so perhaps it’s worth considering. What do you think??