Friday, January 20, 2012

A Day Too Long, A Dangerous Difference (Oh Snap!)


Not sure when I’ll get to post this blog due the ice-storm induced blackout we’re enduring in my neighborhood, but it’s being written late on a Thursday.  (Yes, of course I am wearing my red sweater. As well as a balaclava. Inside. That’s a first. For not being in a ski lodge.)

Yesterday, I took particular notice in the common area behind our back yard, of a 15-foot tall deciduous tree that still had not shed its leaves. The leaves had turned varying beautiful shades of red. Maroon, rouge, crimson mixed in with a dark green…yet were still hanging stubbornly on.

They looked even more beautiful against the snow that was falling Wednesday morning, which is likely why I took particular note of it. They were also hanging on a good month past when the other trees like it and near it had shed their foliage. Even that was pretty late…well into December for most of its peers.

This morning when I looked out, the leaves were gone. And so were the branches. And pretty much the whole tree. The ice that coated the bare branches of that tree’s peers made their boughs bow and bend…but they were still intact.

But for that one spectacular, enduring tree that held on to its leaves too long, beautiful as they and it were, it was game over.

I don’t know why those leaves were still hanging on yesterday.  I suppose it didn’t matter why come today.

The lessons to be drawn from this story are so many and so varied…and so obvious. I’ll let you make your own interpretation and application as apropos for your life.

But the common thread no matter how you apply it: there’s a time to let go, to transform, and be ready for the next cycle nature brings. Hold on too long…even one day sometimes… the snow turns to ice...

Oh snap!

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