Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
There is a picture somewhere of a 13-year-old boy standing on a stool, smiling up at the camera. He half-leans under the open hood of a car with the comfort of a shade tree covering him. This is the first moment that captures my Dad doing the work of a shade-tree mechanic. A hobbyist, under a tree, working on the family car would later turn his interest into a career as a mechanic and auto-body person. My Dad would raise a family in the shadow of that tree.
He later built me a tree-house in that tree, really an open platform that allowed me just enough space in the Summer to carry up a pile of books, look up at the sky, think, and open my world to the many possibilities that lay beyond the little piece of land we called home.
As I was growing up, music played under that tree, imagination was given free reign, my sister was bitten by a dog under that tree, and finally at some point in time, the tree lost its vitality and was taken down. Now, that same piece of land is owned by my brother, yet when I look at that space, the long memories of that shade tree still come to life. Under the shade of that tree is where I learned to think. Like my Dad, I found my destiny under the shade tree, and instead of becoming a mechanic, I became a shade-tree thinker.
Defining the Term
Like shade-tree mechanics, shade-tree thinkers begin as hobbyists. They are tinkerers, self-taught generalists who are interested in a variety of topics, generally take a unique path of development, and answer a call defined more by interests than any specific specialty. The same was true of my father. He may have been a mechanic by trade, but he was a polymath with his mind and his hands. He could be creative when needed, was an inventor at heart, a collector of things he might find useful in the future, and a mentor to young boys in the neighborhood who were looking for purpose.
The Garden Metaphor
Digital gardens must make space for the fruit of deep shade-tree thinking. Thinking for the joy of it, for the perspective it brings. The realization that our inner ideas shape our outer world.
My Dad was a gardener of ideas, who taught me to think of things from different viewpoints, but he also set some rigid boundaries to his thought. Dad often found what worked for him, then looked no further, because life had forced him to be pragmatic and though I believe deep down he was a dreamer, he had given up on what might be for what had to be. He accepted his limitations, cultivated what he had been given, but he refused to make space to enlarge his garden of ideas.
Dad had lost the nutrient of hope that was needed in his life, and his garden began to wither away. His life narrowed. Then my Dad discovered that he was going to die, and in the middle of that tragedy, suddenly everything changed. With life no longer set fully before him, my Dad began to live life in the moment. During his many hospitalizations, he reached out to bring joy to others. He talked heart-to-heart with people in a way he never had, and shared his ideas about life and death, victory and tragedy, openly expressed his love for his children, and when he died at 51, my Dad had lived a life of hope. He wanted to pass on what he had learned, and what he regretted most, to anyone who would listen. He wanted to tell them to pursue their dreams, that most of what we worry about doesn’t really matter when you’re dying.
In many ways, he revealed his heart for the first time, and left a far greater vacancy in this world than if he had continued to live in his despair. My Dad had discovered a hope that knit together the pieces of his hard-scrabble life, and bloomed in our presence so much so that his memory nearly 30 years later, still provides shade to all of his family. He is missed, but he has left an overshadowing legacy of hope that I intend to continue through my writing. Shade-Tree Thinking is going to be a place to encourage others to cultivate their thinking and expand their gardens. It is a place to teach one another that all of us can grow beyond points of despair when dreams see to fail us and life gets redirected.
Shade-Tree Thinking is a space for the generalists attending their digital gardens, to encourage creation with a shade tree in mind that becomes a place where deep roots can draw nourishment to share with the world, so that we might encourage and teach others through the lessons we have learned, the ideas we have produced, the comfort we have received.
Life under a shade tree can be refreshing, when we accept its comfort even while wrestling with big ideas and the occasional thoughtless “bite” that will sometimes come our way. The best expression of our thinking is our writing, and my goal is to set my thinking in place, grow my thinking in space, and help nurture the thoughts of others. Even a small “sprinkle” of inspiration can help your garden grow. And shared mutual expression will produce large, fruitful, shades of thinking in all of our lives.
Further Reading
Smithsonian Magazine: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
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