tales for dreamers: standing still

If I had to stay in one place for long enough, I might as well be a tree, I suppose.

How difficult would that be?

To grow roots, commit my life to this patch of ground I stand on, vowing to the soil that hugs me I wouldn’t part from it until my last breath.

(Unless I were felled before I could die.)

But oh, young dreamer, don’t you see how I billow with envy come springtime, when the birds come from far-flung places, their bellies filled with tales of all their adventures, and all I have to share with them are the same old stories of how I stood still and tall, watching other trees have their own exploits as their leaves changed colour and deserted them, how the snowflakes, gentle at first, settled upon us and continued to pile even though our old branches creaked and groaned under their weight, and how the snow slid to the ground and disappeared into it, and how new leaves sprung up on the other trees and they all looked really cool, neon green and psychedelic for a brief while?

So tall am I that I can see all the way to the edge of the planet, the end of our world, all the places I’ll never go.

I’d pout if I could, but I don’t even have the means to complain to whoever made me, to rant and rave about how unfair it is.

Surely you don’t want to be a tree like me when you could choose to be a flying bird or a scampering squirrel, a charging lion or an elegant giraffe, or a fiery star in the sky, if not a human being.

How you surprise me, you magnificent tree!

All I know is that the sight of you, standing steadfast and unwavering, evergreen and unchanging, reminds me that I too can hold my ground in a world that constantly compels me to be someone else, in some place else, doing something else.