The Forest in Every Seed

I cannot call it when I see it,
For the seed is beyond my ken;
Every time I call it, all you see are
Hundreds of leaves and my pen.
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Quite frankly, that's about the crux of what I want to present today. Whether I'll make sense or not remains to be seen. Trying to put words to something as subtle as a seed—the potential, not yet realized, the idea not yet shaped—is like trying to capture the whole of a forest by sketching a single leaf. The more I try to explain it, to give shape and form to what is, by nature, formless potential, the more the words sprout and stretch, reaching for something vast, complex. Each sentence I write seems to demand a root system of its own, branching off into meanings that multiply and deepen, growing beyond my control.

It’s as though every time I try to hand you the seed, what you grasp is a sprawling woodland: trees fully grown, leaves fluttering in the breeze, shadows cast on the forest floor. The richness and expanse of this imagined landscape seem to stand in for the seed itself, masking that quiet, still potential I had meant to share.

In truth, the power of a seed lies in its silence, its humility. It doesn't shout to the world, “I will be an oak!” or “Here stands a forest-in-waiting!” No, the seed simply is. It holds its possibilities tightly, quietly, so quietly that words can barely trace its shape. And yet, in attempting to describe it, I feel like I’m dragging the whole forest into view, pulling down branch after branch, obscuring the very thing I wished to reveal.

I appreciate that simplicity is the most complex idea to grasp, because it defeats the intellect, and we need the intellect to grasp ideas. But it is only simplicity that truly matters, from which everything else—including the intellect—is born.

Perhaps that is the irony of expression—each time I name the seed, it blooms in the mind of the reader, and soon enough, there’s a wilderness where there was once only a thought, a tiny spark, a quiet kernel of potential. Consequently when I want to show you the seed, all you see are the rustling leaves and my silent pen.

-- Pradeep K (Prady)