Wendell Berry wrote that line. Over the last couple months I’ve been reading poetry. I’ve never read poetry other than the few lines quoted in whatever books I’m reading. However, over the last nine months I’ve found my mind racing, life moving at a very fast pace and my consumption of information increasing rapidly. So I started reading poetry- there’s no fast way to read it other than to slow down and let the words just sit with you. I really enjoy the cadence too because it’s not predictable. This one line though “plant sequoias” comes from a theme of investing in the next generation and doing things knowing that you won’t even be around to see the impact. In an age of self-promotion, self-branding, and mainstream messages of scarcity- this feels like a generous way to live with a mindset that there’s actually abundance in the system. There’s enough to go around. Enough food, shelter, education, time, money and friendship. We don’t have to hoard and protect in order to make sure it goes to our kids. We can actually give and invest in people, in the smallest increments; coupled with the right motive we can live with the secret joy of knowing that we won’t even see what we’ve planted.
