Life developed on this Earth over three billion years ago as little bacteria that lived in the water.
They couldn’t breathe oxygen. They couldn’t see.
They were just little specs, little particles of bacteria.
But nonetheless, they were little balls of energy. Tiny specs of energy.
Just as a fetus is formed from one tiny sperm and egg, all of life has formed from one single particle.
And over time, they’ve grown and grown and grown to become the life we see today.
Humans, plants, trees, dogs, whales, chipmunks, seaweed, caterpillars.
But why?
Why did life want to keep growing? And why does it still want to keep growing?
Why is it so competitive, trying to survive longer than its fellow neighbor?
Why does it try so hard to spend just one more day on Earth?
What is the point?
Maybe it’s because energy wants to keep adding more and more of itself on Earth.
Or maybe it’s simply because life wants to enjoy as much as it can.
Trees take in nutrients and grow taller every day, just to get a little bit closer to the sun. To get bigger. To squeeze in just a bit more light.
No matter how tall trees grow or how big their trunks are, a tree will actually never die from simply old age. They will live indefinitely and only permanently die from environmental or external factors.
And just as a tree stops growing, stops photosynthesizing, and shuts down its body every winter, humans and animals also shut down their bodies when we die.
But there is one big difference:
we don’t turn back on when spring comes.
While trees stretch as they wake up from a long night’s rest, our corpse’s flesh and blood are being sucked in and repurposed by the Earth’s tiny mouths in its dirt.
Maybe we shouldn’t see our jounrey on this Earth as similar to that of a tree.
Maybe we are leaves.
Us and leaves are purposefully designed to be food for the Earth. We are meant to be invaluable nutrients. We decay the moment we are created.
But if energy is never destroyed or created, where do we go when we disconnect from our vessel? Where do we go when winter comes?
Trees’ souls are meant to stay within their bodies forever. And before trees, there were plants, which were also meant to stay in their bodies forever. And before land plants, there were water plants. And before water plants, there were the little particles, microscopic organisms, the very beginning of life.
All of these vessels of energy used the sun’s energy to grow and evolve. Life is meant to be a way for energy to live on this Earth forever. To enjoy Earth forever. To create a form for its intangible shape. To never die. To continually come back over and over for more juicy sun.
And when winter comes, we, the leaves, animals, and the chopped-down trees, come back as different humans, animals, leaves, and trees. Just to create a new form for the same lost, houseless energy.
Just to wake up and try our hardest all over again to keep growing as tall and tall as possible.
To get as close to the sky as possible.
Maybe that’s why all of our churches have high ceilings with art and skies painted on them.
Maybe that’s why mountains are so tall.
Maybe that’s why we keep coming back: to get as close as we can to the sky.
Ali Walks Around 