What will you leave behind?

Legacy - something transmitted by or received from an ancestor  

This week is the anniversary of my father’s passing. An apt opportunity to reflect on one’s personal legacy.  We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, but to leave behind something that will.  Chuck Palahniuk

Personally, I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. Mary Oliver

For, The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.  William James
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. Pericles The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A week after my father died a greenhouse called regarding the delivery of an order of trees. We were unaware of this order. He lived on Elm St where a few years earlier Dutch Elm disease had decimated the street of majestic centurions.  My father was donating trees to each of his neighbours.  His legacy was planting a seed of a tree under whose shade you will never sit. Hyacinthe Loyson. What will yours be?

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. Shannon Alder

Plants talk

When a plant is sad, what do other plants do?  Photosympathize…

Sci fi often predates reality. In the movie Avatar the Tree of Souls extensive network of roots interconnected all life allowing two way communication.  In the last decade research has confirmed that plants communicate with each other above and below ground.

The moment one gives close attention to anything, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller

Suzanne Simard’s TED Talk “How Trees Talk to Each Other’ explained how nutrients are shared between members of the same species through an underground network of mycorrhiza. The mother or hub tree protects her seedlings with shade, supports their growth by sharing nutrients and passes wisdom from one generation to another.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it is attached to the rest of the world. John Muir

Peter Wohlleben wrote in The Hidden Life of Trees that trees had complex social lives when he discovered an old stump about 500 years old with no leaves. The neighbouring trees were sharing a weak sugar solution through the roots. Aside from nutrients, plants emit chemicals to warn other plants of insects or toxins to prevent overcrowding.  Many communicate through electrical impulses, like us.

This week you see a tree, remember that it, like you and I are interconnected to the whole.

Learn character from trees, values from roots and change from leaves. Tasneem Hameed