What Trees Teach Us About Belonging and Life

[OneBlueSky]

“When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.”

by Hermann Hesse . . . from “Wandering: Notes and Sketches” (1920) . . .

selected by Maria Popova for “Brain Pickings”, a one-woman labor of love

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/hermann-hesse-on-what-trees-teach-us-about-belonging-and-life?utm_source=pocket-newtab

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.

(snip)

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

(snip)

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

(snip)

Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R

[Ponietz]

2. "Not that I want to be a god or a hero.

Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

[Catamount]

3. Thank you for that beautiful post.

K%R

[Kitchari]

4. K&R n/t

[Atticus]

5. Thank you for posting that. nt