The measure of a society should be how they treat their elders, no matter how tall. Graham Scott explains.
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Just before the winter storms came, they cut him down. He was maybe 90 years old, in pretty good health but you know what they’re like. They didn’t really understand him, didn’t see why he had to keep standing there looking a bit tatty. After all, what good was he actually doing? He was blocking the light.
In times past they’d have appreciated his quiet qualities, but that understanding is dying out. They don’t have the time to even stop and stare. So, since one great arm had fallen, instead of seeing how he handled that, they simply cut him down at ground level. He’d have been fine with one arm gone, he’d have adapted fairly quickly, within a year or two, but that timescale was way too slow for them.
For him, the days and nights had passed as flickers in the sky. For them a day and a night was as long as at least 15 tweets and some updates on Flickr.
They’d seen the acorns and vaguely knew these were useful food for some animal or other. They couldn’t grasp that he could produce 100,000 acorns a year, vital food for everything from woodpeckers to mice and squirrels. And they’d have been horrified, and made yucky noises, if they’d known that he was home to more than 280 different types of insect.
But he’d be sustaining life no longer. He was cut down, cut up, chopped to bits and eventually he’d be burned. What did one more oak tree matter? They left, forgot all about it, having congratulated themselves on how they could now see the view down across the wide field rather better.
Then the winter came, and with it monstrous winds. The gales howled up the field, gathering strength in the wide expanse of grass, before thundering into the wall of trees, like waves breaking on a sea wall. The trees swayed and rode the blows, holding on tight and protected by each other to some degree.
Except there was now a hole in the wall.
Behind the wall were the young and the weak. Whippy young silver birch, their shiny bark gleaming. Ancient hazel, getting doddery now. Immature firs growing any old how in what had been the shelter of the oak.
But now the oak had gone and the elements slammed through into the interior of the forest, having breached the wall. As the days and nights of storms raged, tree after tree which had stood safely in the lee of the oak went down. Trunks snapped, roots gave way, more holes appeared. Soon that section of forest was a disaster of tangled limbs and roots splayed on the ground as the rains came.
The people hadn’t stopped to think what it was they were cutting down and didn’t understand why that piece of forest now looked such a wreck. It was irritating. This wasn’t supposed to have happened.
I stood at the edge of the forest and looked sadly at the damage and the decaying carcase of the great oak. Reading its rings, it was obviously not that old and showed no signs of decay. In days gone by this would have been a tree of real value, but now it was treated as unimportant.
So it is, I thought, with many men these days. If we’re mature males we’re treated as disposable, irrelevant, old fashioned. Hell, some of us probably have mites and insects in our clothes or beards.
We’re cast aside gleefully by those who want a new world, where – purely by accident – they have the power. But look at the damage the loss of that one tree has caused. That oak stood there through rain and shine, hail and snow, year in, year out. It nourished and protected, quietly and constantly, its great reach providing food and shelter to weaker creatures.
It’s what men do, proper men. And to cast them aside like that oak tree has disastrous consequences for many, for society and for individuals. Let them stand, let them grow because they’ll only grow stronger through facing the storms of life. The world needs strong men, firmly anchored to the ground, to protect and nourish not just their own family but society as a whole.
A wise Stoic Roman knew this 1400 years ago:
Why, then, do you wonder that good men are shaken in order that they may grow strong? No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley. It is, therefore, to the advantage even of good men, to the end that they may be unafraid, to live constantly amidst alarms and to bear with patience the happenings which are ills to him only who ill supports them. —Seneca, “On Providence”
—originally posted at Fellow HQ
—photo courtesy of the author