a message from yale university
When I go out our gate I must choose a way. When I go to the right, I have a better look at the trees across from the gym. I can also see these trees from my window, and their presence is reassuring. One is broken, perhaps by a storm one year; all stand apart from me but also part of my public life, things among the res publica. Someone planted and tended them, as someone planted our young Gingko that I walk by every day. I am reassured that these trees stand and grow on their own, blown and weathered on days like this one, bright and green on other, sunnier days. I also recall that these trees are not for me alone, and their ways are not completely known to me. They sometimes remind me of our own lives, which are both our own and not our own; each of us stands among the public things of others. Like the trees, we were nurtured and grow on our own, both apart and part of the lives of others. We, like those trees, are both in full view and not. Even as our young Gingko stands against the full moon’s indirect light and casts its own thin shadow to the ground, I am reminded that someone else set its roots in the ground, packed the ground firmly around them, and gave it water to get it started on its own. As I look at these trees I wonder at the way others continue to get us started, the way we stand under the light, and the way each of us both is and is not among the res publica. And with these thoughts, when I push open our gate I hope to be pleased by what I yet do not know or see, by what is present to acknowledge and appreciate, and by what is yet to be revealed.
-Dean Lodge
