A neighbour's unruly grape vine had been wreaking havoc on the trees around us. You'll know what I mean by looking at the other photo. Although most of the grape vine has been cut back, there's still a part of it growing on one side. The vines were reaching for this tree, so a while back my dad and I trimmed what we could on our side of the yard to save the tree from suffocation.
Yesterday I was sitting in my backyard to relax and my attention went in this direction. My heart sank as soon as I saw it. And I knew what happened. The new neighbours next door cut it down. I was angry. I tried to save this tree and it was destroyed anyway. But I wasn't at all surprised. Many people don't value trees. They value their fences and borders more. But this tree wasn't causing any problems to their home or yard, which is why I was even more angry.
A moment like this can make us feel like our efforts don't matter. Is it worth trying to protect nature if someone else will come along and destroy it anyway? Is any activism worth engaging in when most of the issues are out of our individual and maybe even collective control? Am I crazy for caring this much? But then I remembered a teaching from a Buddhist teacher named David Loy who said (paraphrasing here) we need to learn to take action and do our best without attachment to outcomes because commitment to activism or service for justice and liberation is necessary in our world. We should take action simply because it's the right thing to do regardless of whether or not we attain the desired results.
Sometimes I hesitate to share my feelings of sadness, anger, and alarm over environmental destruction because I worry that it might sound as if I care about nature more than humans. In my heart I know this isn't true. I've been reading Conversations with Trees by Stephanie Kaza and something she wrote put it all in perspective: "If I love trees so much, they might reason, do I love people less? No, I respond, the two serve each other well. One expression of love deepens the other by cultivating the capacity to meet another being."
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