Be A Leaf

 What’s it all about?  Is there a reason for being here?  A purpose or destiny we are meant to fulfill?  The answer depends on who you are.

If you are a cloud, for instance, it’s all about gathering moisture from the air and raining it down to nourish the plants which breathe during photosynthesis, releasing water vapor back into the sky.  One minute it looks like a camel and the next like a turtle but the cloud’s not sorry, it’s serene. The cloud is transitory, almost formless.  It lets go in order to let be.  

If you’re a leaf, it’s all about absorbing sunlight and turning it into sugars for energy to produce seeds to make more trees to sustain a forest.  An apple tree can have a hundred thousand leaves.  An elm may produce a million.  Each one is a verdant solar panel.  Every leaf is a marvel of engineering. But it’s just a small part of the whole.

So who are you, and what’s your purpose?

The answer is that you are awesome: older and grander than you realized. Your particular life began 13.7 billion years ago when, inexplicably, things started.  Some call this event the Great Radiance when the universe popped into existence.

So happy birthday! From the beginning, your life (and that of countless of others, from stars to starfish) was written into the world-lines of a universe predisposed toward the unlikely possibility that something should exist (and not nothing), that life should evolve (out of seemingly inanimate atoms and molecules), that consciousness and self-awareness would originate (out of apparently dumb minerals and vegetables), and that moral freedom and choice would arise, transcending the leap from what is to what should be.

Our task here is to fully realize who we are: more than carbon-based egos struggling for survival and top-billing on this astronomically insignificant bit of real estate.  We are here for a purpose.  We are meant for each other.  

This is not a statement of faith.  It’s the plainest fact.  Years ago, I visited a confirmation class where students were learning about the world religions:  Christianity, Buddhism, and the rest.  It was spring and as I looked through the windows of the classroom at the budding profusion outside, it dawned on me.  I am not a Jew or a Hindu, not a theist or an atheist. I am a leaf.  

I’m a leaf, just here for a very short time upon this Earth, arrived yesterday, gone tomorrow, enjoying my moment in the sun, but here with a job to do.  The health of the whole tree, root to crown, depends on me.  The flourishing of the entire forest, and all the living creatures who inhabit it, depends on me and on every other little leaf contributing its part.  I have an important role to play.  But you know what?  It would be silly and self-centered for me to suppose that the miracle of spring which sweeps across the northern hemisphere every year when the planet’s axis tilts occurs because of me, or that the twig and limb and branch and trunk are here for my benefit, or that all that sunshine pours down just so that I can absorb its rays.  As a leaf, I’m just a small part of a much bigger performance and finding my own niche in this world depends on aligning myself with that larger, more lasting life of which I’m just a fragmentary and momentary expression.  

That’s the way I see it, anyway.  A leaf doesn’t complain that one of its neighbors may be a little higher in the canopy.  It doesn’t spend its time worrying “after the autumn comes, then what?”  It’s not boastful or resentful or cynical.  Rather, it cooperates, it gathers and it gives away, it unfolds and passes its energy on to another generation of leaves that will come after, and it’s beautiful, always reaching toward the light.  

At some point in your spiritual development, you come to a realization that in response to the question “What’s it all about?”, the correct answer is, “It is not all about me!”  So what I am, or want to be, is a leaf.  The universe was certainly not designed to perpetuate me, but I may be here to protect and celebrate Nature in all its glory.

So love your neighbor, because your neighbor is your larger self. Love the beauty and intelligence Creation manifests.  The great religions and modern science agree. We are sisters and brothers.  Whatever your sect or tribe, whether four-legged or two, we Earthlings share a common origin and are sprung from a single womb.  We’re all in it together.  Separateness is an illusion.   Interdependence is the reality  

So go green. Care for the environment because you are the environment. There is no point where you end and the universe begins. Don’t forget to breathe, to shine, and follow your  own growing edge.  Be a leaf.