Sifting the Silence #75 The matching of branches

toruairc

Aug 4

To connect. To converse. To respond. To listen. To silence.

Through poetry.

There is no such thing as a bad branch on a tree.

What I mean is that no branch is "wrong" or "incorrect". Sure, it may cause a nuisance to us or the neighbours or passing traffic, such that it may have to be cut back.

But there is no sense in which a branch is wrong, a dead end, a waste.

It was Dr. Camilla Pang in her book "Explaining Humans" that got me thinking of this. One of her opening chapters describes the difference between thinking in terms of a box and thinking in terms of a tree. For her, "tree thinking" is a much better way of making her way through the complexity of life (and it makes sense to me too!).

She talks about how thinking about problems or challenges in terms of a tree allows us to explore many different ways of approaching them without getting stuck in a dead end.

This to me means that there cannot be a branch that is wrong or a waste. If a certain idea or possible solution runs out of road, it has taught us many valuable lessons, including what not to do! And we can return to heart of the matter - the "trunk" - and explore another pathway. Over time these different explorations accumulate - all within a clearly identifiable yet utterly invisible framework. And despite the apparent randomness of it all, it all seems to make sense - over time.

During a creative writing workshop with Clare Mulvany some years ago, I found myself writing down during a reflective exercise - I love being trunk! A trunk is solid, anchoring, grounding - but it is also a through way - a super natural highway if you will. And while we see the tree as "above" the roots, taking a global view the tree's super natural highway connects two very different worlds. Soil and stone and fungi and water on the one hand, air and water vapor on the other. Trees are also the ultimate translators - beyond all the words and thoughts we could possibly conceptualise. Somehow the tree just is - just as we simply are. Porous as our bodies are, we connect and translate far more than perhaps we realise.

Like when a son cradles his mother's feet after a very full day - and simply holds them.

It might seem paradoxical - if not oxymoronic - to state in a blog that has been meandering for over a year that I am beginning to comprehend, to feel, that the deepest mysteries, the greatest awe - are not simply beyond words; perhaps they need to be; perhaps that is precisely the way things should be.

Like the gaps between branches, these worlds of language and thought on the one hand, witness and sensation on the other, and silent "trunk-ness" at the heart of all, complement each other. This is not about sensation being better than words. This is about the translation of mutual emergence - back and forth like a pendulum. Except perhaps that this Pendulum oscillates its arcs within a sphere, not just in two dimensions.

We could therefore see ourselves as emergent beings - the sum total in a given moment of all the influences (social, cultural, physiological, close and personal) that play themselves out on our bodies and our "being-ness" over time. But here "emergence" implies a linear process in one direction with a beginning, a middle - and an end. Whereas if we go back to the idea of the translation of mutual emergence, we might see that our own emergent "being-ness" is but one piece in the jigsaw, one part of the story. We may emerge from the worlds around us - but we bring those worlds into their own "being-ness" in our minds as we notice and observe.

Camilla Pang says that

Life isn't linear but branched, and we need our thought patterns to match that reality.

Matching to reality evokes senses of resonance for me. Like where our eldest daughter happened to engage with the Gaeltacht in a manner very similar to my first visit when I was 15. Or the eldest son of a good friend purchases history books to read for pleasure - like I did when I was in school. Or our third daughter cannot visit the library often enough - like I did when I was her age.

Such resonances arrest us with awe - they may even bring some tears to the eyes in moments like these when I recollect them. But if every tree is unique, the matching of branches is neither a dead end, nor is it any reliable predictor of the future. Our daughters, our friends' sons… they will branch their own resonant yet unique pathways. Our hope as parents is that they will carry the best of us forward and make their utter own of it and all else. As Bram Stoker once wrote:

Well then, old thing – my treasured friend – it is a holy thought to imagine my words moving through your heart's heart because then something of me will be joined with something of you and we will stand in the same rain for a time under the one umbrella. (Bram Stoker to Ellen Terry as recounted in Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor)

Tomás Ó Ruairc 4 August 2022

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank

"Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments." Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope and know that authentic conversation between us will unveil the sense of Truth a little more. Tomás (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)

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