If We Can See The Whole And Not The Part We Begin To Change

You can walk into a grocery store, coffee shop or stand on a street, and if you wait just a few moments you can likely hear a car horn, yelling, insults, threats and muted anger. We have regressed from the ability of seeing beyond a behavior and understanding the person, the place, and the context. We have become less active and more reactive and ready to judge with no sense of who people are in their entirety. I submit this "unknown author" as a reflection of something we can ponder upon if we are to begin pasting the fractured pieces of who and what we have become as a culture.

Four Seasons of a Tree- Author Unknown

There was a man who had four sons.

He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So, he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring and the third in summer and the youngest in the fall. When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent and twisted.

The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right. Because they each went and seen but only one season in the tree’s life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it’s winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, and the fulfillment of your fall.