A Creature of Habit

There was once a tree that refused to turn green in summer. That now it is time, every one of the tree's kin has yielded to what Nature meant for them to become. But the Tree-That-Could-Never-Move-On remains to be red as it was in winter. And when you gaze at the beautiful anomaly, you cannot help but imagine how hard it must have tried not to be engorged by everything that is green surrounding it. Perhaps you could feel it pulsating, struggling. Then I thought about what the brave tree has taught: moving on might not really mean progress, or what many people think as change for the better. Moving on doesn't mean moving forward. You could move sidewards or in a manner that's pathetically circular. I liked the red tree the way it is, how it doesn't move on. It still, however, remains in a state of pretty--a state everyone hates and envies, an amazing stasis where I, too, want to merge with. But in the end, the Tree, with all its fiery willpower, withered and died; and it lived because the life it breathed was all in its leaves--not by told by the wind nor by any other current, but by itself. Thus it has lived like no other tree has.