Don’t Give Up Hope! Fall Is A Time To Rise, When Samaras Take On Winter - IMRAN™
Strange Times What strange times we live in, where too many zealots believe that down is up, wrong is right, facts are fake, crime is law, bankruptcy is business brilliance, and treason is somehow heroic. Heaven help us all and God save our nation from a Satangelical cult of American Taliban. As I look outside my blessed home on Long Island, on this autumn day during the week of a truly disappointing, if not shockingly surreal, election day in the United States, I see several similarities and some inspiring lessons.
Reflections on Biology Forgive my digression. Biology was never my favorite subject. In fact, it was the subject I despised the most during my Cambridge University O-level education. I was forced to take it because my late father, an engineer himself, had dreams of my becoming a doctor (rather than an electronics engineer or an MBA, which I eventually chose to pursue). Within biology, zoology at least had the fascination of living, breathing creatures that we can see on TV or in a zoo. Botany, however, was even more boring than biology overall. Of course, there’s always something interesting in nature that one can appreciate in life as an adult. But it can easily be despised when one is expected to learn or memorize a lot of seemingly useless information - and then also have to take really difficult exams on it.
Nature's Lessons Phragmites are part of the common grounds of the property that my neighbors and I share at Heron Pointe, on the Great South Bay, in New York. Today they reminded me of some biology lessons. I did have to look up some words to make sure I was spelling them correctly. “In some plants, the pericarp of an achene extends into a papery, wing-like tissue longer than the seed. This fruit is called a **samara**. The wings enable the wind to carry the seeds farther from the mother plant than seeds without appendages that aid in seed dispersal.” That’s where the summer/samara vs winter wordplay in the title comes from. Even though fall is all around us and leaves are falling from trees, large and small, in the annual rite of death —which is what our democracy seems to be facing—this is also the time when Phragmites and other plants are shedding their seeds for the future to rise up into the air, even though it is fall and gravity is at work.
Hope Amidst Carnage This reminds me that despite the gravity of the situation, we must never give up hope. We must always be planting or shooting up and out the seeds for a brighter future. These Phragmites may be individually flimsy and insignificant, but when bundled together, they are impossible to snap and break. This reflects the parable we all learned about strength in unity when individual sticks bundled together become unbreakable. Not only that, but these seemingly easily breakable Phragmites have actually withstood the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. I experienced this while standing right out there on the boardwalk with water coming up to my feet. Our dock and marina were completely destroyed by that hurricane, but the Phragmites stood strong against the onslaught of nature's fury. Together, they protected our precious homes by curbing the angry waves of a massive, ugly red wave of dirty water that would otherwise have drowned us.
Rising Together Together we shall rise despite the dark forces that seem to be bringing down all the institutions and values that made our country great. Let us hope that this destructive storm passes without destroying our nation and democracy as Hurricane Sandy did to the places it landed. That means resisting current storms, supporting other good people, and rebuilding stronger for a better future. Like samaras taking on winter - despite being buffeted by the vicious winds of war being waged on democracy globally and in America - let us take flight but stay rooted. What do you think?
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