On my walk just now, I was stopped in my tracks by a bush densely covered with creamy blossoms, barely tinted rosy-gold. They were shaped something like trumpet flowers but more blunt. The leaves were a very light sage green.
I wondered, ‘is this a member of the sage family?’ I rubbed a leaf, smelled my fingers: no smell at all. And the leaves didn’t really seem very sage-like other than the color.
Where did I first learn to rub a leaf like that? Maybe from my mother? I don’t know; the beginnings are lost—but it’s an act I’ve repeated many many times.
Deeper, is this bent towards the names of things. I remember how intense the drive towards naming was in my sons, just learning to talk: “Da?!!” they would demand, as they pointed to the unknown.
This need to know the names of things and all about them has echoes among the chimpanzees. The older ones know which trees are fruiting when, and take the others straight there. There must be a drive among the young ones to register the repeating patterns of things, because they will be back to these trees, down the generations.
And we will register that there is such a thing as ‘going back to those trees’ among chimpanzees; and we will watch them do it, gathering our own chimpanzee-knowing ‘fruit’ down our generations.
When the world is in upheaval, it’s not enough to ‘embrace change’. We need patterns, continuity, fruit we can count on. Then we are free to savor the uniqueness of this moment, without any falseness of attitude. We need both change and also the regular beat, before life feels like music.
And the awareness of distinctions, ‘like trumpet flowers but more blunt’ makes it possible to see more: this moment becomes richer as an individual note within the beat.
