37. In order for someone to eat, fruit has to give its life.
Worse and worse! Okay, so the flowers of youth and beauty came along, and we oohed and aahed and enjoyed them, and then they faded and fell. We were sad, but behind the petals small, hard fruits began to swell. So we said, "Well, the flowers have to fade to produce fruit, and we'll be glad for the fruit, so I guess we can sigh and live without the flowers."
Then we pick it. And eat it. And it's gone.
The tree is stripped of all that fruit it worked so hard to make, and its leaves are dry, and rusty at the edges. It looks tired, drained. The summer is over. Autumn arrives, and even the leaves fall.
The tree stands, silent, bare, spiky. . . dead? Not dead. Sleeping. Waiting.
But we, who eat the fruit, live on because of it. You could even say that the fruit has lived and died for its purpose, fulfilled the reason for which it was created, and moved into a "higher state of being." It's changed from juice and peel and crunchy flesh to bone and blood and human muscle.
Weird.
Is it glad, this little fruit? Is the tree happy, fulfilled? Is it content to wait quietly for spring?
I don't know. Here's what I know: The tree is not finished. There will be more leaves. There will be lovely blossoms again and we will ooh and aah. New little fruits will swell and grow and fill us and become us and we will live on because of them.
Spring will come again.
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