It Versus Thou

Audrey Jolly

24 Sept 2014

Sacred Communications, Sacred Journeys

Professor Redick

            As a young girl growing up on 10 acres of thick woods and swamp, I was in heaven.  Every day after school I'd be out in the woods, getting dirty, and scraped up, forever getting myself entangled in the maze of brambles, briars, and small saplings who were always trying to prevent me from continuing my adventure.  My imagination would soar, pretending I was an Indian living among nature.  As a child, it was easy to personify every rock, and tree, and creature, giving each one its own life, spirit, and name.  Today, being caught up in the world of adulthood, it is difficult to imagine the forest back home as a living thing, loving it and embracing it as I did when I was a little girl.  Contemplating it now, the forest where I grew up really did seem to have subjectivity all its own, with me interacting with it as if it had its own soul and agenda.  

            I remember one certain tree I would climb, back in the marshy area of the woods.  It was dead, uprooted and leaning up against another tree.  Looking back on it now, could the living tree holding up the dead one be a source of support, much like a friend helping another in need?  I'd climb up the dead tree, all the way up until it reached the fork of the live tree, and I would continue on up until I reached the canopy of the dead tree, overlooking the rest of the woods and the marshes.  I'd sit up there and ponder about things, and as an I, I was aware of all my sensations, thoughts, and emotions, and as Martin Buber puts it, “I perceive something.  I feel something.  I imagine something.  I want something.  I sense something.  I think something(54).”  But I was never truly alone out in those woods.  The tree, although it was dead, was very much alive to me.  It brought me happiness, and peace, and every time I visited there, it brought me tranquility.  I could go there after a rough day at school, and after fighting all the prickly brambles and mud and saplings, I could go to that tree for comfort, much like I would go to a friend.  Its rather strange to think of a tree as a "friend," but it made me feel emotions that no object could stir within me.  I realized at one time, this tree did have its own agenda, reaching for the sun and absorbing water through its roots, feeding each green leaf with the essential nutrients needed to survive.  Objects, like the computer I'm typing on now, has no goals, no life, no need to fight for survival.  It's purely an inanimate object, merely a tool to bring information to my senses.  That tree, however, was an agency, at one time alive, and as a young girl those years ago, I thought of that tree as a You, a someone.

            Eventually, I no longer had time to venture out in the woods and appreciate that tree's beauty.  I became distracted by other things, and now, I couldn't agree more with Buber, when he wrote, "the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world. . . . as soon as the relationship has run it course or is permeated by means, the You becomes an object among objects...(68)."  The same thing happened to me with the woods, and that tree became an object, just a something, an It, a thing which could only be experienced.  Now, looking back on it, I long to encounter that tree again, and be in its company, having it in my presence while my thoughts wander.  I want that tree there as a strong silent friend supporting my weight (literally) while I ponder the thoughts of the world.