If A Tree Falls (Patreon)

If a tree falls in the middle of the forest, does anybody help it up? Is the tree alone and scared? Does it have friends? A lover? A family? Does the forest have a social security net for the least privileged members of its society? Perhaps the tree fell because it’s been preyed upon by loan sharks and it's unable to pay its credit off due to poor financial education and exploitative economic structures.

Is that tree expected to pick itself up by its root straps? Must we leaf it to it’s own devices for its own good? Let it lay on the floor in its failure until it branches out towards more successful ventures?

Does the tree make a sound? A scream of pain, or a whimper of pathetic impropriety? Is it gravity that keeps it down once fallen, or the guilt of falling where others stand tall? How must it feel, prone on the ground, looking up at its kin stretching their multitude of arms towards the bright blue sky?

Don’t you feel like a fallen tree in a forest full of trunks thrusting from fertile dirt? Why bother feeling pride in your work when Tik Tok will find you a nine year old effortlessly besting you?

Why bother making something when someone else will always make something better?

Oh to gaze up at your contemporaries from the muddy floor of the forest. Why did I fall? Why won’t anyone help me up? Did anyone hear me? Does it matter I fell?

Look at all those trees jutting up into the sky. The tips of those branches are the edge of evolution. I am the fallen. The necessary sacrifice. I fall because others must succeed. How will the victors feel grateful and potent unless there are failures? It’s a cold cold reality when a champion celebrates because you have been insufficient. They wouldn’t celebrate if they didn’t have your corpse to dance on.

If a tree asks why it dies while you grow, would you frown? Would you tell it that it has every opportunity you had, and given equality of opportunity they certainly could do what you have done?

Come on tree, get up.

I don’t want the tree to just…. fix itself. I feel there is something to do for this lonely tree flat faced on the fucking floor.

Maybe when a tree falls you should help that bitch up without much hesitation.

I prefer a fallen tree to not confuse itself with necessary collateral damage in the advancement of a forest. I don’t even care if the tree deserved it, or lacks the inherent natural ability to thrive beyond its contemporaries.

Perhaps excellent specimens should be allotted exceptional resources and opportunities. But that myth of self justified excellence does a lot of heavy lifting for privileged trees that are not subject to the difficulties of other trees planted in unideal soil.

Matter fact maybe we should cut the tops off of the tallest trees and redistribute that excess foliage to the fallen trees HUH?!?!?! Maybe we should impose a height tax on those fucking big billionaire trees and give the fucking trees universal basic income and also militarize the forest and build shrub unions and nationalize the acorn banks I’m The Communist Lorax and I have a gun