Over the years, a mature life will have had its difficulties, its share of pain and misery and grief. If your judgment is good and your understanding of individual responsibility is clear, then your life will almost certainly also include times of happiness and moments of joy.

But if you experience no pain, no misery, no grief, no responsibility; if, up till now, your life has been easy, handed to you by the efforts of someone else; then happiness and joy lose some, perhaps all, of their sweetness. The contrast of pleasure and pain makes life its most interesting. The bad gives more weight to the good.

Sometimes the plight of humans hit’s a little too close to home and we would rather not think about it. So, let us just consider the life of a tree, as though it had some human qualities. And let us pick the tree in the foreground of today’s photograph.