Me and The Tree

One time by some ridiculous circumstances I was meandering half-lost in some township when I came upon a certain curious roundabout. At the center of it was a large felled old tree, functioning as decoration, a tribute to its long life maybe. I came close to it to touch it, this big dead thing that was alive once, yet, unlike us who lose our familiar form months after death, it preserves its life form for a long time in its slow decay back to the earth.

I then looked at the some old dirt encrusted into the trunk, as distinct from a fresher "newer” dirt at my feet. And in this naive distinction I had an insight: the ”dirts” have no form, they are all matter, equally as old, as old as everything. Which led me back to the tree. If it is indeed dead it is the same as the dirt, and yet before me lied a convincing specter of form that seeks to distinguish himself from the nothingness, better called formlessness, of the dirt. All that's left is for it to decay, but that was always true, from the moment the tree is born, it will eventually die, these events are linked. And at this point it came back to me. I am also the tree, I am born, which means I will die.

One can still argue that the dead tree is there, it still "is”, so more correct would be to say: "Because I am, it means one day I won't be”. Which brings me back to the dirt. If I am form, it means both me and the tree are also the dirt. Before I was I had to be made as a vessel – the baby of my mother. Here my existance as mere form is even more evident. During my nine months in my mother I can't even count all the small things that became Me. The meat of a cow my mother ate, which had eaten grass on a plain. The mineral water of some river that someone bottled. The sugar of a sugar cane from a plantation, which was a softdrink. And a million things more that, while not being really me, are of course very much me, as I am a physical portion of this system of matter we call the Universe.

Two more addendums:

1) In Waking Life a character refers to the fact that every 5 years, every cell in your body has been replaced by completely new matter, yet I am still me in the end.

2) Neil DeGrasse Tyson's short talk on the fact that most things and almost all living things are made of Carbon and Hydrogen, which are the first elements manufactured in the core of stars. I and everyone exist because millions of stars were born, grew and went nova since time immemorial, aglomerated eventually into planets a short while ago, and slowly transmuted into things that eventually became humans, which became my mother, my father, which became me.

If I can still call myself a "me” that is.