The Biggest Tree in The Universe
this is why we can't have nice things
If we discovered the biggest tree in the universe, everyone would show up.
The pilgrims would arrive barefoot, hands pressed to its bark, and the poets would call it holy. The scientists would debate its age, trace its roots to the beginning of time. The sales reps would charge as the line would form - always a line. The wellness coaches would sell bark-dust-tinctures and bottled-air from it’s base. The billionaires would book private helicopters for “quiet reflection,” and an angle only they could afford. The monks would come to listen and give thanks. The activists would chain themselves to its roots and canopies. The influencers would arrive in linen, holding ring lights, doing tree pose in front of it - so many good angles!
Everyone would want a piece. We’d argue over who found it first, who owns it, who gets to name it. Everyone would say this tree changed my life.
Someone would whisper, it hums when you touch it. Someone would whisper, it heals. Someone would build a fence “for protection.” Someone would build an app and someone would graffiti love wins across its trunk or something dummer like E&A Forever. Someone would open a café nearby called “Rooted.” A movie deal would get made before the first leaf even fell. Governments would declare it sacred ground. Corporations would declare it a brand.
And a few people, maybe just a few, would quietly sit beneath its shadow, feeling, for the first time in a long time, small and alive.
Either way, at some point, the tree, this vast, ancient being would stop being a tree and start being a mirror. It would show us everything about who we are: our greed, our longing, our endless need to turn the sacred into something we can sell.
Once again, we will be reminded, O, this is why we can’t have nice things.
Not because we don’t deserve beauty, but because we don’t know how to be in relationship with it. Because we take, we are takers. We don’t know how to leave anything alone. We confuse possession with appreciation. We mistake access for intimacy. We love to name things, claim things, share things, extract things, but rarely do we know how to sit with them. To allow them to sit independent of us.
Maybe the lesson of the biggest tree in the universe isn’t how big it is, but whether we could simply let it stand. Unowned. Unbranded. Still growing.
If you find medicine here, consider buying me a coffee and/or supporting me for just $3.75!
& now’s a perfect time to buy a copy of Brown Enough in Paperback (one for you, one for the homie, one for the neighborhood library) and listen to Season 3 of the podcast!