Prickly

My older sister Janet regularly sends tidbits of information my way. She knows that I have a fondness for seemingly useless trivia and likes to share it.

This week she shared with me some information about holly plants (Ilex aquifolium).

When most of us think about holly trees we think of the leaves that are prickly-edged and pointy and make it a challenge to go near them without being poked.

What I didn’t know was that not all of the leaves are like that. In fact, the leaves start out smooth-edged. It is only when the leaves have been nibbled by deer that the tree turns the genes on to make the leaves spiky when they regrow as a defense mechanism.

On taller holly trees you may find the spiky leaves at the lower levels where hungry deer are apt to grab a meal and smooth-edged leaves on the leaves higher on the tree where the deer cannot get to.

There are few situations in which botany can pack such a powerful metaphor for how people interact with one another.

The 16th century French philosopher John Calvin had a belief that all people are born inherently good and that it is choices we make and circumstance in life that lead people down a path toward evil. This is opposed to 17th century Thomas Hobbes (not the tiger from the comic strip), who taught that people were inherently bad.

Holly leaves are inherently smooth-edged and friendly, welcoming even. It is only when they are damaged and attacked that they become prickly.

Think back to your childhood. In kindergarten it was easy to make friends. You and all those around you were smooth-edged like a freshgrown holly leaf.

By middle school and beyond, making new friends got a lot harder. It doesn’t take too many bad experiences to know that some people are just not very nice, and in turn as a defense mechanism you turn suspicious and wary.

It is only when we are far older and more secure in who we are that it once again becomes easier to interact with others and let our defenses down somewhat.

I was thinking about the lessons of the holly tree this week as I was stomping through the ice and snow of my front yard. I was thinking how we are all hardened and made wary by our environment and conditions around us.

Unlike trees, which can only react to stimuli in predetermined patterns set down of thousands of years of evolution, when it comes to people, biology is not destiny.

We as thinking, breathing and feeling human beings make choices about how we react to adversity.

There are many people whose hatred of the snow and ice was reconfirmed during last week’s storm and the current one that is raging as this goes to press. They simply want to make it through and dig out and make plans to go someplace warm as soon as possible.

The storm brought power outages to many, disruptions in plans, and headaches. However, every time I go outside, I am reminded of why I choose to live someplace where the air makes my face hurt. I am reminded of the beauty of snow-laden pine boughs and the patterns of sunlight refracting from an icicle caught in a sunbeam.

It would be easy to let life’s headaches make you prickly and hard to approach, much like the holly tree with defenses always at the ready to keep potential predators from coming too close.

Life is too short to be a holly tree. Time is too fleeting to keep everyone and everything at an arm’s length away.

As we head into the Christmas holiday and look with longing at the start of the new year and the days incrementally getting longer, it is important to let down our guards. It is time to forgive those who have wronged us and offer an embrace rather than continuing to be prickly in defense.

In this time of good will and fellowship, we must choose the path that keeps us smooth-edged like the leaves of a holly tree.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.