Yesterday night, I was checking my phone one last time before going to sleep and came across this topic “What if trees could speak as well”. After three hours of tossing and turning, many things came into my mind, the first being, it would be chaotic.
All the torture we did to these mute living beings since the beginning of the era would come all at once on us. If trees could talk then this world would see the biggest protest against the human beings. They would scream and wail about their dark history, the oppression their ancestral trees would have faced and the maltreatment they came across in the name of development. They would question us as to why were they cut down if in the end the wooden furniture, utensils, and all other wooden items had to go into the scrap yard. They would question us as to why was it necessary to cut one of their kith and kin when we could print on both sides of the paper when we could have recycled the paper when we could have reused the wooden containers.
An African proverb goes, "Paper cut is the tree's final moment of revenge”, but in the changing world where trees could talk, it would not be the only revenge, they would avenge us by making us listen to their wailing, their shattering cries, the heart-piercing curses and finally their deafening silence because an axe may forget but a tree always remembers.
Think about a world where you could befriend a tree, who would give you not only fruits but advices as well. Imagine going to your tree friend and saying,” Oh, I am feeling a bit down. I think, I am going to catch a flu” and that tree will pass you an apple reiterating “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.(Pun intended)
Imagine the curses coming out of that tree when a drunk driver collides into it or the cringe-worthy expressions when it will be forced to listen to the lovey-dovey conversation of couples sitting under its shade or the pure bliss of happiness when birds would come and make nests on its branches after showing their gratitude.
We may imagine that if trees could talk then their maltreatment would decrease but will it? Animals can communicate but we still hunt them down, we might just cut down trees and use them anyway. Sounds heartless but progress is impossible without change and those who could not change their minds cannot change anything.
Dorianne Laux once said, “Even if trees could speak, they would not”. A trivial sentence with a deep meaning. Ponder over it and always remember,
“Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world,
Today I am wise so I’m changing myself”