Trees and Happiness

Look at a tree: They obviously like adventures and grow in the most diverse and intricate ways! However, do they look like they grow so that they totally uproot themselves for some kind of uber extreme adventure?
No. Unlike our modern society often does, trees grow well rooted. And yet they grow the most adventurous and complicated flowers!
See, a tree that uproots itself wont be able to grow in complex forms. It would be like hydrogen bombs: A terrible adventure for a second, but then mostly just really really dull pain and then no more adventures whatsover.

A tree knows, that rootedness and adventure don’t grow in opposites, they grow together. And happiness is the realization of just that. Happiness is obviously not pure explosion and monstrous adventure in total pain. And happiness is not pure rootedness with nothing to do.
It is not in the extremes, but within the tension of curiosity (yay adventures!) and feeling of connectedness (rootedness), where trees can grow to the most beautifully diverse (happy) forms.

So in practical terms if you want to be a happy tree: Plan for the future to have great adventures, but don’t plan so that you forget that the great adventure that can make you happy in the end will always rooted here in the present moment.
When there is suffering in the present moment, than we put our hopes in the future. This hope, is really part of being there for yourself as good as you can, in the present moment.
Trees dedicate some effort to have interesting adventures growing not just today but also tomorrow. But they don’t plan so that they can no longer grow well today.

They know that no flowers in the future can be so interesting as to cut your flowering today. Cut the roots today for the flowers of tomorrow, you cut the flowers of today and tomorrow. Stay focused on your well-being, here and now.
Thus: Be like a tree. And hug one.

Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC-BY-SA-3.0 Published in the Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angkor_SiemReap_Cambodia_Tha-Prom-Temple-01.jpg
Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC-BY-SA-3.0
Published in the Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angkor_SiemReap_Cambodia_Tha-Prom-Temple-01.jpg