Even A Tree Will Bend
Picture of the tree by me, LeAnn D. Jenkins. Asset Credits (Adobe Stock): “Watercolor green foliage seamless pattern” By Nastasia.
“If there is a constant wind going in one direction, even a tree will bend.”
As usual, I’m talking about trees. There is a tree along the path by the playground and pool near where my sister lives. Something about how the wind moves around the bend and down the bayou that it rests beside means that this tree constantly endures the wind’s force on one side. You can follow the bend of this tree and see where it first grew up straight out the ground and then, when it was tall enough to catch the wind started to bend in the direction it now consistently grows.
I was sitting on the slope nearby tracing its bend when I was reminded of the forces that shaped the tree. I thought “If there is a constant wind going in one direction, even a tree will bend.” And immediately I thought of the ways I and the people around me are shaped by the winds of our environment that we grow up in.
I’m thinking of how people who I experience as having the capacity to be expansive end up with unyielding doctrines and violent stances that seek to eradicate the other. I’m thinking of how many times now, when I talk to a person, I can see the strong influence of a particular algorithm. How we don't live in the same reality anymore; we have different "facts." I see the way that algorithm connects with long-seated socialization, fear, and a desire to belong... and I have empathy.
It reminds me of a poem I wrote a long time ago (don’t judge it, please😄) :
—
AS IF BY STRING
We got swept up.
A harsh wind came through
Broke us from the tree we grew out from
Carried our light bodies
Down, out, and around
Made it so our minds could only follow the trails it carved with its movement.
We dream in the tunnel it creates for us.
We love in the tunnel it creates.
We fight in the tunnel it creates for us.
At times, the wind slowed
And we thought we’d been released
Breathed sighs of relief
closed our eyes
to find ourselves
suddenly snatched along
By a wind
that had stuck us to itself,
As if by string.
When we pray for a better master
instead of running free,
Beat our sons and daughters
Just like we were beat,
When our nephews get high on public transit
And we call the precinct,
Judge fresh salmon at the grocery
For not being bright pink,
When we dream: profit, more profit, sex, sleep, and repeat,
It is the twist and turn of our bodies
Moving through the tunnel of a harsh wind
That swept us up, stuck us to itself, and pulled us along,
As if by string.
—
In other words, socialization works. Propaganda works.
If there is a constant wind going in one direction, even a tree will bend.
Let me play with my thinking here. I am talking as if growing up straight is only natural, and that the bending is unique. I am talking as if being shaped in this way is something I see in others and my only connection is to have empathy for them. And I have only been talking about one type of wind and one type of bending.
So let me be real. The tree is me too. No one grows up not shaped by the massive winds of their society, the conditions of their environment, of which they are a part. We all have different responses to it.
There are winds and bendings that break a tree or cause it to crash down on the things around it. There are winds and bendings that create new possibilities for the tree and the environment around it. Either of these can be things that we perceive as good, bad, or neutral.
I could talk about a part of my own journey as a bending.
I think now of an experience I had when I first started to look into plant medicine. That night, I dreamed of a wind blowing on my neck so hard that my head was bent to the side, struggling to straighten against it. In the wind, the voice of the Spirit said, “You need to trust yourself.” I woke up suddenly to find that side of my neck warm and tingling as if something had literally been blowing on it. Immediately, I thought “But you’re not supposed to trust yourself!” That’s what I’d been taught growing up in the Christian church.
With the blowing of the wind, a rigid rule inside of me started to bend and with it, I did too. There are trees I’ve met that are beautiful precisely because of their bending.
I say this to say that bendings aren’t inherently bad. I say that for myself because I’ve been taught that to grow up as the imagined version of a form is preferable. Because I have lived into violent stances, and words, and actions in honor of this rigidity that I understood as righteousness. Anyone who knows me from childhood up to 30 can attest to this easily! And there are surely traces and imprints of it now.
What the tree evoked for me, though, is the understanding that living beings that I’d like to see as strong, steady, and even “individual” are not shaped in isolation. They are connected to and shaped by the forces in their environment as well as those in themselves.
For any of us, maybe we can ask “How does the way we’re growing affect our life and environment? If we are growing in a direction, is that how we want to keep growing? Is the way we want to grow made difficult by our environment and our position in it? And if so, what support is needed?”
