Waking Trees

There is something in the wave of a branch that comes from a gentle breeze that makes one feel it does so because it is alive. 

            Indeed, it must be alive! Not in the sense that everything that grows lives—taking in food of some sort and reaching further and further for the heavens. No, not that sense. But in the sense that somehow, when a tree waves in a particular way, it reveals some truth about its mental state: that it has a conscience! Or, to put it in a far simpler manner: that the tree is waving its limb in a concerted effort to offer greeting.

            I saw a tree wave just like that only yesterday. And perhaps it only feels that the tree has a conscious mind because I want it to with such grave desperation.

            Or perhaps, just perhaps, it feels this way because long ago, all of the trees were consciously alive, waving and greeting and passing on the slow wisdom of their incremental growth. And even now, it may be that they only need the smallest of hints to be reminded that they can wake up…

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