Bend like a tree

Our poor rhododendrons! Bent over to half their height, branches touching the ground, covered in a massive weight of snow. Surely, that's the end of them! No hope of recovery! No more blaze of purple in May! At least that's what I might have thought if I had not been through 25 New York winters. Upstate, we are guaranteed to have at least one major storm a year that dumps a foot of snow and more. It closes the schools and makes the roads treacherous for a day or two. This week the university closed too and one school bus rolled over. (Thankfully no one was hurt.) We dig tunnels for the pugs in the garden, the plows clear the roads, and life continues. You wrap up that bit more, take additional care on the roads, and go with the flow. Spring is just a couple of months away. There's really no point in fighting winter or wasting energy complaining about it. 
The rhododendrons know that too. Bowed down under immense weight now, they will spring back in the thaw more luscious than ever. 
What's their secret? They adapt to conditions. Trees are pliable. Strongs winds blow and trees bend with the force. Snow bears them down, and the trees allows it. We do, from time to time, see trees come down in the snow. It's usually a tree beyond its years, old and dry, no longer alive with sap. The branch, once pliable but now brittle, snaps under the weight. The living branch bends and so perseveres.
Seeing our rhododendrons I was reminded of the Daodejing:

Men are born soft and supple;
dead they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

(76, Stephen Mitchell version)*

According to philosophical Daoism, nature has so much to teach us. Pliability, flexibility, yielding bring success. Hardness, stiffness, dryness are conditions for brokenness. An unyielding stance appears strong. The uncompromising "principled" approach to life is commended. Yielding is considered weakness. But, the trees know better. 

I will try to learn from the trees!

+Ab. Andy

* Stephen Mitchell, Tao De Ching: A New English Version, New York: Harper Perennial, 1988.