All my life I’ve been told, by people, by society, that I’m choosing a life that will ensure with me ending up as nothing more than a leaf on a tree. Far, far away from the trunk, an outcast, insignificant and ultimately – replaceable. Expendable. Should I fall – another would grow, take my place.
My answer to that is yes. I am a leaf. I do live on the fringe of the tree, touching (only briefly w...hen the wind blows) a few other leaves in my cluster, then coming apart once again. I cannot survive prolonged contact with anything else, for fear of suffocation and having my purpose, my process left incomplete.
And yet it is my process that determines why I am a leaf. I am far away in order to create. To take the beauty, the sunlight of the world, and filter it down to words upon sheets of paper, to glucose absorbed by cells. I live, I thrive upon this process. Some call it madness, deviancy from the oxygen-breathing masses – the way I take what is thrown out, ignored by the rest, in order to live on.
And one day I will die, blown off the tree, falling to the ground. No matter how hard I try, escaping the tree would still end in death. And in this demise, I will crumble to dust, and nothingness – what I had created from sunlight living on for a few flickering moments. Maybe it coursed through the entire tree, giving it life for a few seconds. Maybe it reached only a few other leaves. Maybe it nourished only me, a single leaf.
Yet, what people do not know, what parents are unable to comprehend, what the trunk and the roots and the branches do not think about, is the reason why I do so. Why I choose to continue doing so. It’s not to feed the tree – I am not that noble. I choose to do so for the creation, the act of taking sunlight and transforming it into life, taking beauty and making it mine. I live, I experience, I feel, I laugh, I suffer – and through it all, I admire the beauty in everything. And I will always choose to do so.
My answer to that is yes. I am a leaf. I do live on the fringe of the tree, touching (only briefly w...hen the wind blows) a few other leaves in my cluster, then coming apart once again. I cannot survive prolonged contact with anything else, for fear of suffocation and having my purpose, my process left incomplete.
And yet it is my process that determines why I am a leaf. I am far away in order to create. To take the beauty, the sunlight of the world, and filter it down to words upon sheets of paper, to glucose absorbed by cells. I live, I thrive upon this process. Some call it madness, deviancy from the oxygen-breathing masses – the way I take what is thrown out, ignored by the rest, in order to live on.
And one day I will die, blown off the tree, falling to the ground. No matter how hard I try, escaping the tree would still end in death. And in this demise, I will crumble to dust, and nothingness – what I had created from sunlight living on for a few flickering moments. Maybe it coursed through the entire tree, giving it life for a few seconds. Maybe it reached only a few other leaves. Maybe it nourished only me, a single leaf.
Yet, what people do not know, what parents are unable to comprehend, what the trunk and the roots and the branches do not think about, is the reason why I do so. Why I choose to continue doing so. It’s not to feed the tree – I am not that noble. I choose to do so for the creation, the act of taking sunlight and transforming it into life, taking beauty and making it mine. I live, I experience, I feel, I laugh, I suffer – and through it all, I admire the beauty in everything. And I will always choose to do so.
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