Moustache Attack
"Cycles"
479 words
I was once a tree. Deeply rooted in my bad habits and strong standing in my beliefs. The seasons changed, and with them, everything around me. I was unmoved.
Until the day something caught my eye. Some kind of light. Exactly what it was, I didn't know, but it was bright and warm, and it filled me with a feeling of hope that I had never felt before. It was all I'd ever wanted, and suddenly I felt complete. I shut myself off from the world around me. I didn't need anything else, as long as I had this light. I don't know how long it was, but it was blissful. I felt nothing. Nothing but sweet fulfillment. It was like a dream.
But I awoke to flames.
I cried out for my light. There was no reply. I was scared and desperate. My light had left me. I wanted to run, to escape the flames, to chase after it, but I couldn't move. My roots were too deep. I let myself burn.
For a while I was dead. There was no sign I'd ever been there at all. But again the seasons shifted, and rain began to fall, and the fire was extinguished. The animals returned and the soil was renewed. The water seeped down, past the debris, past the pain of a tortured land, all the way down to a seed. A seed left by fruit of one of my own branches. And the seed began to grow. Once again I felt hope.
Then I was new. A sprout peaking through the ashes to find the light and air I craved. At first glance there was nothing there. Desolation. Charred remains of a once glorious life. I spent so long staring at the settling smoke and thinking about how things used to be, that I didnt notice what was happening around me.
I'm not sure what made me see it, but finally I looked at the ground surrounding me. At the fading embers and fallen ash. I saw, amidst all the black and grey, more and more small stems of green, just like me. Other dead trees, once old and strong, now fighting for a chance at rebirth. At redemption. Together we have hope.
Someday, I know, we will thrive again.
We are a population obsessed with second chances. We spend so much time longing for the past, and pleading for what we can't have, we don't notice the beauty of destruction. For with destruction comes opportunity. A chance for something better to take its place.
Life will take from us. And just when it seems we have nothing left, it will give back. All we can depend on is what we make of the times when everything seems bleak.
When the smoke clears, life will be seen again. We can only choose to look for it.