Whenever I get bogged by the mundane details of life and the annoying minutiae of a troublesome moment, I move to any of the windows on the back-side of our home and look up to this evergreen in the distance. It must stand at around 100 feet tall, and be around 75 years old, give or take a couple of decades (the latter is most definitely a rough guesstimate). Its size and age immediately put things into perspective, and as I examine its snow-laden boughs I think of all the life it has sustained over its existence. You’ve probably seen this view before, as I often post it whenever there’s a need to be grounded.
When you think of everything that has happened in the last 75 years, this tree has stood through it all, unbothered and exceedingly unaffected by any of it. The only thing that may have troubled it is weather or disease, and neither looks to have scarred it in any way. It’s been putting forth pinecones for future trees ever since we’ve been here, and though they are largely raked away or pulled out of the manicured surroundings, its lineage could be easily continued if the neighbors allowed so.
For now, and likely for the remainder of my life, it will stand in such stead, a lesson and reminder of how transient our human lives really are – a reminder of how silly our trifling worries are in the great map of our earth.
