Jo Angami
All my life I thought that trees and Nature were such vital parts of my being, not just for the sustenance they provide but on a more psychological level, their aesthetic quality, something about more than just utilitarian. And if you’ve lived in Kohima, you know that you grow up with the mountains around you, filled with trees in all four directions. Most of our childhoods are filled with books where nature in her best is ever present. Anne of Green Gables and her world of Shimmering lakes and Haunted Woods never seemed strange to us, we also had ours…or so I had thought till my mid 20s. It is only now that I realise that I never grew up with trees, the sight of them on the mountains that seemed deceptively close had fooled me. I had really grown up around concrete and GI and potted flowers. This was the reason for the sinking overwhelm I felt every time I went to a forest, the sense of awe and strangeness bordering dread even. The swaying of trees was not natural to me, the silence I thought I knew was actually foreign and the green that spread out for miles made me feel small and nauseous even as I tried to convince myself that it was something I have always loved. It is shattering, to come to terms with.
And the thing is, it is not because you have come to love concrete and metal. Not at all, now the realisation makes you feel even more boxed-in, in a way. The longing for nature has not been snuffed out, it has become more intense. Now, it is not simply wanting to enjoy more of it but the desire of wanting to learn to enjoy it. Why, though? Why shouldn't I simply acknowledge that I've deceived myself all this time and turn my devotions somewhere else? I can now see that it is a characteristic that Nature shares with everything that is really good, in the truest sense. My desire for Nature obviously doesn't stem from having grown up close to it, so it must be a desire that calls to me from somewhere else. And where else should I turn to but my Creator? And so I did, and was reminded once again of His commandment to mankind to look after all His creations. The desire as I have called it was actually Divine duty. That is why I suppose I was unable to turn away from it even when all my faculties, influenced by the world ever since I was born, called me to turn from it. It was only then that it fully dawned on me that I could wax poetic about my love for the forest all while sitting deep in the comfort of the city or I could go to the forest and pick up the plastic from underneath my feet. There is no love without duty.
I imagine it must be similar, in a sense, when one comes to terms with learning a subject they really love and have chosen to pursue it but finding out that they really know nothing when they begin in earnest. Like living on the foot of a valley with a beloved mountain behind and believing you lived really close to it, only to climb up the valley and find out that there were lots of valleys and hills in between you and the mountain. I suspect it is also similar to deceiving myself into thinking that I am a good person when I am in reality, just surrounded by good people. It is only when I have to enter the forest that I find myself choked and overwhelmed by actual good.
But just like how the realization of my ‘imagined’ connection with nature did not kill the desire for the connection, only fools would be turned away when they discover that they actually know very little about their chosen interest and now have to push through hours of learning to get close. We would also be fools to turn away from desiring to be good once we discover how impossible, overwhelming and challenging and costly it is. It is all Divine duty, we must keep on entering the forest. We must learn to love the trees again
