gm-reflection

(This post follows Blog 2: The Sugar Maple and the Long Now , where I reflected on legacy and planting for futures we might never see.) Let’s be honest. Most of us aren’t Gandhi or MLK. We’re not standing in front of bulldozers or organizing mass movements. We’re not flying across the country to protest. We’re not going to make the news. We’re definitely not going to trend. We’ve got jobs. We’ve got kids. We’ve got a leaking tap and a back that hurts. Some days, we barely have time to care — and yet we do. Quietly. Deeply. Sometimes with a little guilt. I’ve lived in that in-between place. Not passive, not unaware. Just unsure what to do with what I knew. So I started small. I stopped mowing most of our back field. I built a few bluebird houses. I planted a butterfly garden with seeds I found online. Not because I thought it would change the world, but because it felt like movement in the right direction. The neighbors noticed. Around here, the lawn is a badge of honor. I didn’t al...

  “You don’t plant sugar maples for yourself. You plant them for your grandchildren.” A long time ago, a friend of mine in Oregon, who also farmed maple syrup, said something that stuck. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but now it lives in me.   (This post continues from Blog 1: The Joke That Wasn’t . If you haven’t read it yet, that’s where the crack in my cynicism first began.) https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/3745980224068107214/8212771631672611782 There’s something strange about legacy. You don’t really feel it when you’re racing to survive. I used to think in weeks, months, maybe years. What job next. What bill this month. How to fix the world before bedtime. But that one sentence, about sugar maples, has been quietly reshaping how I hold time. It takes decades for a sugar maple to produce syrup. You plant the tree knowing full well you may never benefit from it. And still, people plant them. Not for return, but because they believe someone wil...