“The falling tree makes more noise than the growing forest. » I repeat this African proverb to myself when I feel affected by the cascade of bad news that the world’s media convey daily. The vast majority of news stories repeat wars, attacks, crises, political mistakes, accidents, etc., emphasizing the number of dead and injured and the cost of the damage. We are bombarded by the story of falling trees. And some fall with a crash.
It’s disturbing, it’s dramatic, but it only reflects a small part of reality. Although information is essential to promote the democratic spirit and solidarity, we must also know how to distance ourselves to preserve our mental health.
This news which falls on us like trees, these hopes for better policies for the protection of our planet and security in our societies which do not succeed, these dreams of peace which are cheated by ambitious narcissists or religious eccentrics are so many small mournings that we have to experience every day, so many small attacks on our mental balance when they are not severe psychological trauma for some of us.
Although the losses are numerous and almost daily, let us not forget that the forest, during this time, continues to grow irremediably, that the trees rise to the sky in silence every day and that this represents an irrepressible vital force. These growing trees are also the billions of humans who grow, who learn, who find solutions, who love each other, who show respect and kindness and of whom almost no one ever speaks.
As with the trees of the forest which feed on the compost left by their predecessors and undoubtedly on volatile compounds coming from other trees, human minds need to be constantly nourished in order to develop. This slow growth is based on transmission between generations and between individuals. It is through education that human minds develop and flourish. And this education takes many forms.
Could the billions of human beings who grow in silence one day be prevented from doing so? Could this natural process one day be stopped or diverted for the purposes of a totalitarian system or the omnipotence of money, two ways, after all, of controlling populations? Can we count on an aspiration for freedom and a thirst for justice innate in human beings? Is the impulse that pushes individuals to come to the aid of people in distress, often by taking risks for strangers, written in the genes of the social animal that we are?
We don’t yet have the answers to these questions, but if we do, civilization will continue to grow inexorably, regardless of the conditions in which humans are forced to live. In the meantime, we are left with art and giving.