The Tree of Woe

"There's none like me!", said the cub in the pride of his earliest
kill.
But the jungle is large and the cub, he is small.
Let him think and be still." --Kipling

Sometimes in our lives we make a mistake that hits us in the face
just as soon as we make it and we end up wondering just what in the
hell we were thinking when we did it. Just one little misstep, one
moment of unclear foresight and we end up hanging upside down in the
tree of woe getting kicked in the face just because we made one wrong
move. And we get pounded and pounded and pounded for it. Unable to
get out of the situation that our mistake has invoked and knowing
full well that even if we do get out of it there are going to be
plenty of cuts and bruises to remind us of where we just were.

The lesson that comes from a visit to the tree of woe can sometimes
be very hard to ponder because it touches on the butterfly effect.
One action leading to another and another. One bad event leading to
another and another.

For instance: we get into an argument with someone. At the end of the
argument we speed off in our car. We get pulled over for speeding and
get a ticket. We go to court and have to pay money to take care of
the ticket. The money we use to stay out of jail was the money we
needed for rent. In the spending of the rent money new stress is
added and another fight takes place. And as the chain reaction plays
out we end up wondering just when all these bad things are going to
end. We don't see the almost comical detail that we are now right
back were we started.

Instead of learning a lesson from the first visit to the tree of woe
we only find various reasons for complaint. We sometimes don't
realize that the bad things that happen in our lives are invoked by
the bad things we do in our lives. And that more times than not we
are doing nothing but walking right back into the very same situation
that invoked the first series of bad events. It wont stop until we do.

Mistakes often play out in circles. And we spend a lot of time and
energy in complaint rather than realizing that we are the ones who
are choosing to take the time to walk in the circle and never really
getting anywhere. In essence, we are sometimes the only problem we
really have.

It's an odd thought that sometimes we get beat down by events that
play our lives as a primal way of the fates telling us not to get up
and pursue the path that just opened up. Pain and fear are meant to
be tools to warn us that something somewhere is just not right. But
humans have that little problem of ego and the primal instinct
of "fight or flight". Most of the time the ego will tell you to
fight. And in accepting that path you end up in the circle rather
than simply getting up and being on your merry way, leaving the
problem and all the events that it will invoke behind as little more
than another lesson learned.

Sometimes, just having the will to get up after being knocked down in
a blessing in disguise. And that is the truest test of your worth and
wisdom.

Angel Snowden -2006