When a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?
I reflected on this question two days ago when my husband and I were watching the swaying of trees near our home during a storm… and literally a 100+ year old tree cracked and fell in front of us! We recently moved to a new home in the woods and have been concerned about the distance of one tree from our house so we were assessing the stability of it when we heard this very loud, ominous sound to our left. As we witnessed this tree that must have been 80 feet in height come crashing down, in slow motion, hitting several other smaller trees, when it came to rest on my husband’s car.
We thought for sure his car was crushed. Amazingly, it had no damage to it at all. This surely had to be some type of miracle. The tree fell instead across our road blocking our neighbors from using the road until the next day when the tree was cut up.
Going back to the initial question… why would the answer be anything but ‘yes?’ Does it need our perception to hear it? If absent of a human being’s perception of it falling and hearing the sound emitted, would there be a sound?
It is an interesting question that can draw parallels to life itself. When I was 19, I worked as a nurse’s assistant in a nursing home. I spent all summer caring for physical and emotional needs of the elderly, the sick and dying on my shifts. I learned a great deal from them. They told me of their lives. Their long lives including family, friends, occupations, parties, sadness and loss, and regrets. They wanted me to see them. They wanted me to see the whole of them, not the broken-down body and mind before them. They wanted me to know that they matter and that their lives had great meaning to the world. They were like the 100-year old tree that had fallen, they were significant and great and profound. They wanted me to hear what is was like to be at the end of their life. They wanted me to hear their sound. To bear witness to their life, their love, and their death ultimately.
I believe this is what we all want in life: to be seen, to be heard, to be honored.
To know, like the immense tree, that our life is profound and important and that even in our hour of death, that someone is watching, someone is listening, and someone knows that the totality of our life was immense.
