Theater of Pain

Every life has its journey: from born to grow, from grow to learn, from instinct to knowledge, from weak to strong, and from bottom to peak.

Imagine a tree starts its life from a seed. It starts to grow out of the soil, then grow roots, stems and leaves. The plant slowly depletes all the nutrients from the seed and will depend on its leaves to create photosynthesis to sustain its growth. It isn't an easy process. There are maybe a million chances that the process can go wrong and unable to complete its life cycle. Inherited defects and external dangers can make the growing process difficult and challenging. Eventually, the plant needs to depend on its stems and roots and leaves to withstand the tough environment. Without the thick and tough stems, it's likely the plant can not resist the unmerciful winds. Without the deep roots into the solid ground, it doesn't take a lot of water to be flooded away. The trees we are seeing everyday do not grow over night and probably only the trees themselves would know how many storms and floods and droughts and sicknesses they need to go through to become the ones that we are seeing.

The trees know better than us growing is never an easy process. Where the seed is dropped determines the rest of its life. Some trees might think wouldn't it be great if they can be grown in a greenhouse? Or wouldn't it be great if they can be taken care by a gardener. What is exactly the point to grow in a tougher environment whereas they need to go through all kinds of mishaps. Most importantly, what is the meaning of growing. Isn't it more simple just to be born as a tree as it takes forever to grow from a seed to a full size tree.

Let's say one day we become gardeners to grow trees. Some will be planted in the hill and some will be planted in the greenhouse. As time goes by, trees in the hill become dirty and tough but with strong stems and deep roots.

Trees in the greenhouse are clean and smooth but their growth are limited by the size of the greenhouse. However, life couldn't be better as long as it stays where it is.

Bad times come. The owner of the greenhouse goes bankrupted and the gardeners lose their jobs. All the trees from the greenhouse need to be replanted to the hill. Well they are the same trees coming from the same seeds so that there wouldn't be any problem, would it? The trees from the greenhouse start going through what the trees in the hill have been: suns, rains, droughts, winds, inserts, birds. Over time they all become dirty and tough. Some don't have strong stems are blown away by the storms. Some don't have deep roots are flooded away by the rains. Some decide to quit before either the storm or the rain comes.

After a while, the owner comes back to the town and reopens his business. He hires the same gardeners who used to work for him.

"We need some trees in our park" says the owner.
"Don't we used to be in the forestry industry and replanted all our trees in the hill?" the gardener replies.
"We can go back to the hill and replant them in our park again."
"That's a good idea!" the owner says "But we can only replant so many trees in the park"
"Let's pick the good ones." says the gardener.
"How do you know which ones are good?" the owner asks.
"The ones who have the strong stems and deep roots are" the gardener answers.

The final day, the gardeners go to the hill.
"Pick only the goods ones and leave the rest alone" one gardener is telling the others as they are marching towards the hill.

- EKCLee @ 2005 -