A Child, A Book & A Tree

The origin is unknown to me but I remember well this Spanish saying: ' En la vida, hay que tener un hijo, escribir un libro, y plantar un árbol'. In English it means: 'In life, one should have a child, write a book, and plant a tree'. I don't know why this suddenly came to me, but it stirs me a little that perhaps I should start living my life, if I don't want to regret one day at my death bed that I had totally wasted it without achieving anything worthwhile.

Having a child is definitely the most daunting task of the three, as it requires cooperation & dedication of another person for the process, which might even prove to be a much bigger & tougher challenge. I love children - other people's - and enjoy chatting or playing with them, then as soon as they misbehave, I can return them to their parents! And, I never have to worry about them during their absence.

I have never planted a tree, unless planting seeds of white cabbage and green lettuce count, which I did do in my boarding school days, as part of the education. Can I call them miniature trees?

Never have I written a book either, nearly as daunting as having a child. It is in a way like giving birth to a child, a brain child. But for that I need to have enough brain power to start with, lots of research, study, patience, and hours and hours of concentrated and dedicated writing, for months and even years, far longer than a pregnancy, to produce a book. And, at the end, whether the book is worthy of it's name is still a matter of debate.

Glancing up my site page, I see that I am writing my 4,552th Blog, in 5 years since my first one. An average book has about 4 or 5 hundred pages, so I have written the equivalent of 10 books - but disjointed, of totally unconnected subject matters. Maybe each Blog could be consider as a chapter on it's own? So I am not talented enough to write a book, at least I have an imitation of one which had been published. I will call this non-existent book 'Accidental Existence'.

Strictly speaking, anybody can write a book but ... Remembering the dozens of times when I had read only as far as the 2nd or 3rd page of a book & thought that I had already wasted too much of my time, and that the only place for it was the waste-paper bin. Inevitably wondering what idiot publisher was responsible for it's being on a shelf of a bookshop in the first place.

Tags:child,book,tree,

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