off ramp

Every workday morning, I take the same highway to downtown, and I exit the highway on the same off ramp on my way to work.  Every workday morning.

On Wednesday morning of this week, I sat on that off ramp and while waiting for the light to change and looking out my driver's side car window, I saw--really saw--for the first time, the grandest of oak trees.  How could I have missed it so many times before?  But there it was in its silent grandeur, it's reaching branches and its trunk miles around in circumference, standing silently as it had for maybe 80 years, certainly longer than the highway had been there.  And the world rushes by every morning in all its pressing busyness...so busy, such important business to take care of, so much pressing in on every side...and the oak stands and lets it all go rushing by...doing what it has been doing for years...growing, reaching, living, sending roots down deep, silently and slowly sucking up life into leaves and branches and leaflets, silently and slowly...very slowly...so not in a hurry...becoming what it was meant to be.  

Let the world rush by in its perceived self-importance and rush, let it all rush by in such pretentious self-absorption...the oak is not distracted or misguided or caught off guard...it just does, everyday, what it was meant to do--grow--slowly--steadily--silently--into its grandeur.