Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
~ Albert Schweitzer
There has always been something beautiful and miraculous about one solitary leaf as it lingers then slowly, finally dances toward the ground. Glimpsed by few, maybe by none, but no less gorgeous, no less significant, no less real or relevant.
~ Ronna Detrick
Once upon a time and a hundred years ago a woman typed away on a laptop as she sat in a gray chair in the living room of her condo in the city of Tacoma in the state of Washington in the United States of America in the Western hemisphere of the world as she knew it. She typed what you are reading now. And she wondered if anything she could possibly say would have relevance in the future.
Then she began to wonder if anything she had already said, already written, already created had any relevance. “Probably not,” she realized. So she pondered whether any of her labor or struggle or questioning of her work and voice in the world had been or was was worth it.
“For if, after all, 100 years from now, no one recalls or even cares about what I did and said back then, does it matter?”
She realized, even as she asked it, that it was an existential question, one that made her want to pour another glass of wine and think less and watch back-to-back dramas on Netflix. But it was only 10:30 in the morning. Wine and mindless entertainment weren’t timely choices right now. So instead, she sat with the question, mulled it over in her mind, and stared out the window. She saw the sun streaming through the lingering leaves: all browns and yellows now – the green faded and gone. They clung to the branches as long as
they could before fluttering to the ground. She knew they would eventually disappear – raked up into piles and scooped into big black plastic bags and taken to some distant destination for disposal and decay. It all felt related somehow, timely and true.
But the longer she looked at those leaves and thought of their pre-determined demise, she realized that after Winter, Spring would come again and new leaves would grow, that Summer would arrive with green-in-glory, that Fall would return; the cycle repeating itself over and over. And all of this without her effort, without her intention, without a bit of her labor or
concern.
She wondered if maybe, just maybe, the same might be true about her writing, her words, her life.
Maybe all she needed to do was be the leaf,
to allow the sustenance of the roots to be unfurled through her. No effort but that which naturally came forth. No intention but being right here, right now. No labor or concern, but that which turned her face toward the sun, or drank in morning’s dew, or huddled in chill at first frost, or sought shelter in the storm.
Nothing required except to finally loosen her grip and gracefully, willingly, let go.
“Yes,” she thought, “just let go.”
She wondered if in 100 years there would still be leaves and trees and seasons, if there still would be women writing, never mind if they were reading anything she had written or said.
And she realized that she could not, would not let go of this – what mattered most of all:
women’s words still bursting into bloom and thundering forth in greens and reds and oranges, becoming the very substance that fertilizes those that are yet to come.
So she turned back to her laptop and typed some more…
There has always been something beautiful and miraculous about one solitary leaf as it lingers then slowly, finally dances toward the ground. Glimpsed by few, maybe by none, but no less gorgeous, no less significant, no less real or relevant.
~ Ronna Detrick
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
~ Albert Schweitzer