A Walk In The Woods

I spoke too plainly at the wrong time.  I've spent a good deal of time kicking myself over it, so I went for a walk in the woods to have another go at letting it go. 

We all make mistakes. As I walked, I realized again I'll stop making them when I'm dead, so they’re keeping me alive.  I guess I knew I was taking a risk, expressing my thoughts.  I probably crossed a line that wasn't exactly visible from that vantage point.  On second thought, I'm pretty sure any reasonably astute person could have seen it.  As I think about it, I think I even had it pointed out to me once.  

I might have even thought I was giving a gift when I said it.  Sometimes when you give something away it comes back to you ten times over; at other times you just lose. Loss is the risk you take. 

As I enter a clearing, I find a bare tree that should have flowered and sprouted leaves by now.  I realize it's probably diseased or even dead.  There's an analogy here somewhere.  This little tree has to keep on giving up its blooms (probably with whatever a tree's version of pride and delight is), only to have them replaced by much less colorful leaves, which wither and die.  Then they fall off, and then they rot.  When you stop taking the risk of giving yourself away, you yourself withdraw and dry up, like that little tree and will be judged to at least be diseased, if not dead. 

But the tree still expresses those blossoms, puts forth its leaves, and, sooner or later, they fall off and die. Is the tree suffering when its leaves fall?  Do we lose something when what we express misfires and is lost?  Just like the tree, if we stop expressing ourselves, we will be judged devoid of life, won't we?

So I guess it's this same kind of process--taking chances, expressing myself, (misfiring as I did this time) and making mistakes--that keeps me alive. If all that sounds like suffering, I guess suffering is keeping me alive, too. 

There, I have wrapped it all up in a neat little package.  Now, as I turn my foot to kick it to the side of that path, a squirrel pops out from behind a tree and gives me a quizzical look, and I ask myself, "couldn't I just this once, have a do-over?"  Ah, nuts.