Читать книгу Like a Tree - Jean Shinoda Bolen - Страница 21

I thought about the Wolf River apple tree outside the window, one among others that still remain from an orchard planted long ago, that has provided apples, beauty, shade, and pleasure and, in turn, been appreciated and tended. It is such a contrast to another apple tree, also on my mind: the one in Shel Silverstein's children's classic, The Giving Tree. There are lessons and choices for us in contrasting these two.

The Giving Tree is an illustrated book about a boy and a huge apple tree. It begins: “A long time ago, there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.” He climbed the tree, ate her apples, took a nap in her shade. He loved the tree and the tree loved to play with him. As the boy grows older, he no longer comes to play. One day the boy returns to the tree and he looks sad. When the tree finds that the boy is sad because he wants money, the tree happily gives him all her apples to sell. Each time, the boy returns to the tree, he is older. The next time, he is a man and he wants a house. The tree tells him, “You can chop off my branches to build your house.” The boy takes the branches and leaves happily. The next time the boy returns, he is getting old and wants a boat to go sailing and relax. The tree says, “Use my trunk to build your boat.” So the boy does and leaves happily. Finally, after many more years go by, the boy, who is now an old man, comes back to the tree. The tree is sad because she is nothing more than a stump, and has nothing more to offer, but the boy says he doesn't need much anymore, just a place to rest. “Come boy, sit down and be happy,” said the tree, and he did and the tree was happy. The end.

The story of the Giving Tree and the boy is troublesome. The relationship it models is natural and healthy only when a child is very young. An infant's needs and wants are pretty much the same, and when her baby is content, his mother is happy. A toddler who wants what he wants when he wants it, and is always indulged, becomes a selfish boy with a sense of entitlement, and if the pattern continues into adulthood, he will remain the narcissistic boy with the expectation that his mother and mother-surrogates will be his Giving Tree. Or, as we are seeing, he—as a symbol of human narcissism—will treat the planet as the Giving Tree, with the End being the end of the beauty and abundance of Earth as we know it.