10-11-1980: leaf

Rotterdam. I just finished my lunch and take a small walk in the park near the Adriaan Volker building where I'm employed. A magnificent collored leaf is falling from a bush.

Every leaf can only fall once and only once from a bush or a tree. That is the most significant dead it can perform.
After having functioned a complete season / lifetime in service of the tree, dying is the only act it can perform. Dying to make space available for a new leaf in the next season.

Freed from the tree, the leaf whirles slowly to the ground. Its final destination, where it sacrifices itselve completely as nutrient to be dissolved into the ground. Through the roots of the same or a different bush / tree the nutrient comes back to life. Usually as a new leaf and sometimes as a fruit in order to die after a similar lifetime. Rarely a new tree germinates from the fruit of the tree.

Humans have a similar road to travel.

After having functioned a complete lifetime in service of mankind, dying is the most significant act we can perform. Dying to make space available for the next generation of persons. Once dead, our soul whirles downward toward its final destination the return to our origin and to become completely one with God (or whatever Name you preffer to name the unknowable One).

Most persons are like leaves, but sometimes there are persons that bloom like flowers. A feast for the eye, a paragon of beauty, the splendor of their time. Their thoughts, spiritual legacy and acts are the fruit that is provided to the onces surrounding them. However even these splendid persons will die. And in very rare occasions their legacy will be the seed to germinate a new way of being.