IN my file of old clippings, I came across a news item about a woman who climbed a tree and stayed there for almost a month. Everybody incessantly attempted to persuade her to come down, but she just stayed there.
It turned out that the reason why she climbed up was because she was angry at her mother. She had been working in the city and had been regularly sending money to her mother so she could make improvements on their dilapidated house. But when she came home, she found out that the house had not been repaired because the money was spent on something else. In a fit of anger, the young lady refused to stay in that house and climbed the tree to live there. Exposed to the elements, she endured cold, heat, hunger and thirst for many days. She also got respiratory infection. Finally, someone was able to forcibly grab her and they fell into a safety net laid out by the family and neighbors under the tree.
We shake our heads and chuckle at this story. But doesn’t it speak about us, too? When we get angry with someone, start a quarrel with our loved one or spark a heated argument with an associate, we too climb up high on the tree of pride and refuse to go down. We’re too high and mighty and self-righteous that we fail to see the point of the other person.
Blinded by our indignant pride, we refuse to give way. Instead, we harden our heart even more. And who suffers? We do. We endure this smoldering anger in our heart, so much so that we lose sleep, we can’t eat, we can’t focus on our work, we get palpitations, and our blood pressure shoots up. Admit it, it is not easy to be “unforgiving.” Nothing feels so good as the feeling of relief when we come down from the tree of pride and open our heart to forgiveness. Let’s not wait for something or someone to forcibly grab us and bring us down. There may not be a safety net.
I agree with Nelson Mandela when he said: “Having a grievance or resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill the enemy.”
When I was a boy, I used to climb a caimito tree. It was my favorite nook. I felt isolated there, away from everyone. I had a good view of the sugarcane field and the mountain from the distance. I could have stayed up there forever. I felt like being on a deck of a hundred feet even if I was just about 10 feet up.
Then after a while, I would hear someone calling my name. It was for me to run an errand. Vexed that I was interrupted from this reverie, I would go down to Earth.
While it is easy to forget the passing of time up there, one cannot stay there forever. Reality interrupts. The needs of what’s on the ground cannot be ignored. Being up there is intoxicating, they say. We soon get too attached to our worldly comforts, privileges and entitlements as well as people’s adulation and approval.
We need to go down from our pedestals, titles, functions and social standings, and humbly acknowledge our limitations and weaknesses. Pride can be blinding.
But sometimes there is a good reason for climbing up a tree and wanting to be up in the canopy. Not out of pride but to detach ourselves from the turmoil on the ground. For some people, it’s just for inspiration, to get away from it all. Personally, I find peace up there. I guess it’s the contemplative in me. It’s like a meditation. It is my form of sanctuary.
It is a form of detachment to regain our perspective because many times we get so mired in mundane and trivial matters. One naturalist says: “I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” Like walking, sitting on a treetop calms the mind, invigorates the soul and puts everything in perspective. Maybe it is the fresh, oxygenated air or looking at the horizon or the soothing calm of green, but a certain kind of hush seems to take over.
There were times when I faced tasks that made almost impossible demands on my creativity. I would face a blank wall. People call it writer’s block. I would abandon all that momentarily, and in my mind, I would climb up the caimito tree of my childhood and sit on my favorite branch and look at the horizon. I would walk back my thinking and after a while I would begin to see the whole task in a fresh new light and in proper perspective, and then the creative juice would start flowing, and the jumble of ideas and thoughts would jell together like pieces of a picture puzzle.
Days ago when prospective clients simultaneously invited our group for biddings on virtual events involving complex set of activities to be managed seamlessly, my colleagues panicked. Winning any of the two biddings is vital and critical to the survival of our small organization in the wake of the long lockdown that almost decapitated the advertising and entertainment media industry. But both presentations had to be done in a week’s time.
I was listening to the tumultuous brainstorming to come up with the big ideas that would help us win the bids. But the problem was everyone seems to have lost the perspective. There were two bids and everyone was throwing ideas that mish mashed the two projects. To make it more confusing, they were excited about ideas that were more on the creative treatment aspect and I felt the discussion seemed to be going nowhere.
I immediately asked the discussion to be put on hold. I then led everyone to follow me to climb up my caimito tree and see the tasks at hand from a wider perspective. Soon we could see where we should focus and what we deemed to be more essential to pursue. We then divided ourselves into two focus teams to avoid mental overlapping and confusion. Then after that, everybody climbed down to hit the ground running, so to speak. I was left on the caimito tree to oversee the tandem projects to make sure they were going in their respective proper directions.
The problem I see in what is happening in the national scene is the lack of proper perspective. Our leaders seem to be mired in the mud of political bickerings, trading insults, character bashing, finger pointing, looking at competition, usurping power, while people who have been ravaged by the onslaught of typhoons and floods are left alone to fend for themselves. Help is coming in trickles.
We all need to climb a tree and see the whole picture. Let’s call a truce and stop our petty quarrels and find out what is truly essential at the moment, and then get everyone to integrate efforts on the ground to bring help where it is needed while at the same time coming up with a long-term solution to the problem from a bigger perspective.
Destructive divisiveness is not what the nation needs. We need all the help we can muster. As one columnist asks: And who wouldn’t welcome the idea of all our top officials coming together behind shared objectives of beating the pandemic and saving lives, and truly “act as one”?
All it takes for us to work together is some humility, which comes from the Latin word, humus, meaning ground or Earth. We can spend a moment perched up there for inspiration and perspective, but we must get down on the ground to get things done.