AS we go through our lives, many of us may realise that the universe is made up of circles. Almost everything in the natural order is a circular loop; the things which begin in a certain way will always end in the same way. A sunset will always follow every sunrise. Every birth will always end with a death. Every moment of faith will always end with the creation of destiny. Although we may not realise it, human beings tend to spend their time attempting to understand these circles and finding a way to become a part of them.

We seek balance and equilibrium in everything that we do, and the only way to attain these things is to become a part of the natural order. Of course, the dilemma lies in the fact that we can never be certain what the ‘natural order’ really means in terms of a human life. On one hand, the natural order could be the process of facing life as it comes, without attempting to change it. On the other hand, one could argue that the natural order for human beings is built on our tenacious nature and our tendency to fight our destinies in whatever way we can. So, maybe, the natural order is whatever we choose it should be.

Perhaps the natural order is hidden away as secrets in trees. After all, trees are vessels that can hold secrets most quietly. Their shape can hold the laughter of children who have already grown and moved on. Their leaves can hold the maps to treasures that people have forgotten they had buried. Their hollows can store the stories that we have stopped believing to be true. They bear all these things with a quiet sense of purpose, like sentinels posted to guard humanity. As each generation comes and goes, the trees will wear new rings and take on bigger forms, but the secrets they carry will remain just as they once were – undiscoverable, not because they are hidden, but because they are forgotten.

Like the quiet trees, we absorb the world around us and allow ourselves to fall in line with what the natural order seems to be. We carry secrets and stories for so long that they become a part of our identities. What we do not realise is that the things which we hide in ourselves are not really hidden, but on the verge of coming out in another shape. The trauma that we refuse to face comes out in the form of abuse of the people we love. The broken dreams that we refuse to move on from come out in the form of pressure on our future generations.

You see, the secrets that are hidden in trees do not disappear if they are not discovered. They simply dissolve into the soil when the tree dies and decomposes. Then, when new seeds sprout, they take up those secrets and build their bodies with them. The burden of these secrets is thus passed on from one generation to another. Soon, there will be forests of trees that suffer under these burdens without ever understanding why they are condemned to carry such heavy weights.

Generation Z is expected to have one of the lowest birth rates as compared to its predecessors. Of course, there are numerous causative factors that have contributed to this outcome. Nevertheless, we cannot be certain whether this is a truly negative or positive outcome. What we can say for sure is that we are likely one of the few generations that will pass down the least of its mental and emotional burdens on its successors.

Perhaps we have finally come to face the fact that it is less cruel for us to fail to create a new generation than it is to create a generation that will carry the same burdens that we will. Perhaps we have realised that if the suffering was removed from the old trees before they died, the new seeds would never be given the responsibility of carrying burdens they do not understand.

The truth is, some circles are meant to be broken, even if it means that we must make sacrifices. It is the only way we can heal the world.