There once sat a little tree, and that little tree was very dear to me. Most trees are anything but ordinary, and this tree was considered even more extraordinary than the rest. How could a tree be extraordinary you ask? Well, it is quite a peculiar story indeed.
Late one night, when I was around five years old I came across a small tree growing just like me. His roots were bigger than his trunk, and his leaves grew with such speed that by the time autumn came, all the leaves shriveled up and covered the entire trunk. As though, the tree was only made up of large oval, at this time dead, leaves.
The other trees frowned at the leaves and thought what a pitiful tree. They boasted that they had all grown to just the right proportions. The little tree wept from all the chatter around him, until one day I came along. Winter had come, and all the leaves were now taken by the earth once again, and I came across an interesting tree.
It stood out more than the others with its large heavy branches and its skinny trunk. The bark even looked as though it was larger than the trunk itself. Almost like when a person wears a shirt that is two times too large. I’m not entirely sure what about the tree made me smile, but it did.
Ever since the first day I met it, I made sure to visit every day. I gave it more water than the other trees and made sure that despite its idiosyncrasies he would survive the harshness of the other trees.
As the years passed, we both grew to the right proportions, just at the right moment. The other trees saw how beautiful the tree had become, and wept that they didn’t look like it, but the tree did not boast about its beauty. Instead, the tree gave each tree one of its leaves, so they too could feel beautiful.
