Tenacious Life

Have you ever admired a plant? I have. It’s a climbing plant that lives not far from my balcony. Broad green leaves that are constantly reaching towards the heavens and climbing everything in site to get there. A plant with a goal. That’s more than I can say for allot of people I know.

Last summer I watched as it climbed the guide wires to the top of an electric pole. Slowly but surely it made its way and once there it still kept trying to reach out but ran into some obstacles. Namely the live wires that would zap and singe it away, allowing it to go no further. It spread out all around the live wires as if it was testing them, or maybe teasing them. I'm not sure. It seemed to be a pretty smart plant. When the wind picked up the leaves would be frying right and left and disappearing into little smoke trails. If a storm came along it looked more like the fourth of July. The plant would get wet and then be blown into the wires and the whole top of the plant seemed to light up and has veins of electricity shoot thru it. The next morning I’d go out on my balcony to look at it and could tell right away that it was in pain. All burnt up and drooping everywhere. You think it would learn its lesson about messing with the force it was facing. It refused to back down though. In a day or so I’d see it perking back up and heading for those live wires again, as if it had come up with another plan to finally get around them.

Then one day the determined plant went too far. I was puttering around, just cleaning up a bit when everything went out. The power was gone. I walked outside and looked at the pole. What a sight to see.

That plant had finally just grabbed those electric lines and strangled them to death. I'm not sure if it was anger, frustration, or an attempted suicide but the plant had finally won. My personal opinion is that the plant had spent the summer feeling out the lines and looking for its weak spot and once finding it had killed with a vengeance, but that’s just me.

I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. I started clapping.

You've probably guessed that this story doesn't end here.

About an hour later the men from the electric company were milling around at the base of the pole. After pushing the plant this way and that they finally found the fuse looking thing and replaced it. Power was restored and they went away.

I felt sorry for the plant. After all it had gone thru to slay its archenemy, the thing had been resurrected like some horrible monster from its grave.

It gets worse. When I came home from work the next day the plant that had fought so valiantly was no more. They had come that day with machete’s and weed eaters and hacked and weed eated until there was nothing left except the tendrils of its former self hanging from the higher places. It looked as if the very earth from which it had grown had been salted. I wanted to cry.

The view from my balcony was not the same after that. I quit going out there for the rest of that fall. Come winter I didn’t want to go out there and with the arrival of spring I felt better. For some reason I had developed hope. I kept watching, waiting. I believed in that plant even if it didn’t. Somehow I knew it would come back.

It was in late June when I first noticed the tendrils going up the guide wire. By July they were a quarter of the way up. All thru July I kept cheering it on, I even went out and watered it during the dry spell we had. My plant and I are on a mission.

Its now mid August and once again the plant is at the top of the pole. I’m writing these words now because just this afternoon it reached out and touched the power again and promptly had one of its leaves vaporized. I watched in wonder.

This plant could be you, or me, or any one of the people we know. Always reaching for the highest we can go. Dancing with the energy of life and dangers that face us. Finding our way around it, trying to go thru it or finally just strangling it out of our way. Sometimes we get cut back to the very roots from whence we came but always, always, we strive.

Its good to be alive.

Love and light to each of you,

Wupy

Beautifull story. Deems true to all lifeforms. As time goes by we strive for more, always reaching for goals set, not yet achieved. Even when times get tough and we find ourself sitting in the same place we were in the beginning, we still shake it off and start again. Till someday we will reach what we so disire.
Thanks again

Very well written, an obvious talent.

Nice work wuppy!!! I kinda get the meaning to keep going on, and not to give up thank ya