The many lives of a leaf

Do wild thoughts count as resistance? Is charting one's own path and travelling alone a rebellion that will be remembered?

- Uddipana Goswami

Before the leaf plunged into the air and floated away with the wind, it was what the tree was; it lived where the tree stood; it swayed how the other leaves swayed. It was attached to the branch, the bole, the root, the ground. The life of the leaf was a good one, with kith and kin, dancing and joy, feeding and feasting on the sun, the air, the soil. But it was a restless leaf; its thoughts travelled where it could not; it longed to follow its thoughts in the wind, through the world. Sometimes, it revelled in the solidity of the tree that kept it from straying, from doing the things that a leaf wasn't meant to be doing—like wandering alone and aimlessly in the world. At other times, it felt it stayed rooted, absolutely grounded, only because it could not leave.