Uprooted

I have always grown in the soil where I was planted. My roots took hold as sunlight and water powered triggered my birth. From a seed I quickly sprouted, groping the soil as my roots began to grow. As my roots absorbed nutrients from the soil I grew a few small branches. These eventually spawned bright green leaves. Throughout my life my foliage has been pleasant to observe and I have never felt out of place bed of plants with whom I associate.

One day, a strange man came to our soil. His hair was graying with his advanced age. His wizened face was framed by an a beard black as shoe polish, contrasting with his top of his head. His clothes were old and worn and been mended many times. His wrinkled eyes cut to the truth of whatever he saw.

As he walked through the hillside, he stopped and took notice of me.

“Hello there, plant-friend. I’ve seen you growing on this hillside for years and have to wonder—what do you think of your hillside?” This seemed a strange question for a man to stop and ask a plant.

“This hillside has always done right by me. We are south-facing and receive plenty of sunlight, and the rains come to water me and my brethren consistently. I have never had issues with growing or with my neighboring plants.”

"What about your soil?" the man asked, a curious hint of mischievousness creeping into his a smile on his face.

"My soil has been suitable. It has provided me the nutrients to grow taller than many other plants. I know my soil well—it is comfortable and has never disappointed me.

"Have you ever experienced any other soil besides your own?" the man asked.

"Of course not. I am a plant, and where I take root is where I must grow. This soil is mine, I have made it work for me. A plant can only over experience a single plot of soil."

"That, my plant-friend, is incorrect. Your soil is fine, to be sure, but it is not your soil. Your soil is composed from the long-dead bodies of both our ancestors. The worms have eaten the bodies of our ancestors, fertilized the soil, and provided you the nutrients you have so enjoyed in your blissfully uneventful life. I have seen many other plants which have grown and died in the very spot you stand, and their remains also feed you. I have seen the rains wash away the dirt on your hillside only to have new earth replaced the mudslides. Have you ever considered there may be other soil?"

"I know other soil exists and have heard much about the various kinds. This has been passed on the wind from my dandelion cousins. I have learned much about the soil of my cousins, but I have never laid so much as a seed in new soil."

"What would you do if your current soil was washed away? Would you explore new soil?"

"I would try be forced to find the most interesting soil. A soil different from my own, where I could grow taller, learn more. I would reach my roots out as far as I could to expand the depth of my experiences. Yet I know my own soil so well. It has helped my family and I grow, and leaving the comfort of my soild would scare me. Fear would keep me firmly planted in place."

"Let me help you start this journey, then."

Suddenly, the man grabbed me at the base of my stalk and began to pull. His grip was tight and he began pulling without any regard for my root structure. I could feel a tightening within my lower tendrils. My roots go deeper than even I know, I thought. The man strained to pull me from the ground. He began to pull harder, now with both hands. I could feel the dendritic network come apart, parts of myself separating and becoming lost in the soil. Leaves fell off of my limbs, and I felt my stalks being scrapped and bent by the man's rough, weather-beaten hands. As he pulled, the entirety of my identity as a plant, my history, my own self, all began to crumble. Finally, all at once, I felt an immediate loosening of my body from the soil, and then—I was tied down to nothing. The fear of being pulled up from the soil vanished. In a flash of that moment, I left my soil behind. I left the known, the certain, and entered an unknown bound by and bound to nothing. Utter dizziness from the feeling of freedom.

“You have torn me from my home, from my soil. Everything I have known, that I have believed about myself, has been ripped away from me. What do I do now?” I pleaded with the man for direction, for guidance.

"How should I know? I merely came to rip you up from your soil. I have observed the behaviors of many plants, and in all cases have found that they are always unable to free themselves. They require a free spirit to come along and uproot them to show them that there is another possibility, a life in different soil. I come to cause them to doubt and question their own roots. I have undermined your soil, but I cannot transplant you to a new home or show you where you will find better soil. You instead have an opportunity. You can re-grow, expand your roots back into the soil from which you were ripped, clutching onto the only anchor you have in this uncertain world. Or, if I am right about you, you can embrace becoming a free spirit, such as I am. In either case, you must do this on your own.”

Stuck, I laid on the ground unmoored and frozen, unsure what to do next. A wild path stretched out before me, once that would require navigating without a sense of direction or knowledge of a destination. Stunned into inaction, I asked the man one question.

"What do I call you, free spirit?"

"My name is Zarathustra."