The Little Leaf That Did

I was idling down the street, not paying much attention to my surroundings, probably staring at the ground and preoccupied with thoughts that allowed my body to run on autopilot. Without thinking—or at least without thinking about what I was doing—I reached up and pulled a leaf from a branch. Then I stopped walking, realizing what I had done, a tinge of shame curling itself around my face.

A lesson learned

It’s not that I’m a tree hugging don’t-hurt-the-plants proselytizing extremist, but I try to do my best to respect all forms of life. (No offense to self-proclaimed tree huggers.) Pulling the leaf off the tree was uncalled for; childish, even. 

So there I was, standing near the big black spinning cube at Astor Place, staring at this little leaf in my hand, bewildered. What bothered me most of all was my mindless nonchalance, how I acted without a hitch, only afterwards realizing what I’d done. Without my mind to keep it in check, my body had done something I wasn't proud of. That bothered me.

I rubbed the leaf’s glossy finish under my thumb. Instead of letting it fall to the ground I decided to hold onto it until I learned something. And so I continued on my way to dinner with a couple of close friends, still holding the leaf under my thumb. As I went, I thought about design in relation to the leaf.

Beauty came to mind. I began to question: is the leaf even beautiful? is it the best that it can be? Evolution tells us its form is fully derived from its function, to feed the tree. Is that it, then?—beauty derives from a utilitarian perspective? In this case, perhaps, but there are a zillion things that are beautiful and have no inherent use. Or is beauty a use unto itself? It could be that beauty—visual attractiveness—is far more vital to human existence than we give credit. If anything, it would seem to be a tool to soothe the mind.

You can imagine the look on my face, with all these questions popping into my head, when I showed up at the cafe. I had a lot of thoughts and not nearly enough time to explore them. So, still, I held on to the leaf.

When the waitress came over to take our orders she eyed the leaf and reached for it. She must've thought it came from outside by accident. I quickly said, "No! That's a special leaf!" (I wasn't expecting her to go for it, those were the first words that came to mind.) She bounced back, incredulous, probably asking herself what the hell was wrong with me and wishing she had another table instead.

I explained how I ended up with the leaf. I told her I had to learn something from it. She was more interested than I expected, a little amused. My two friends and I started discussing what had just happend, how the waitress probably thought I was crazy. Then another waitress came over and reached for the leaf. Again, I said, "No! It's okay!" She must've heard about it, because she wasn't nearly as startled; she even looked across the restaurant and said something like, "You were right!" to our waitress.

They both came over and the five of us started discussing why the leaf was important. After they left, my friend Adam, on a whim, summed up the lesson I was looking for by saying, "It's amazing that treating something mundane as a precious item has such a huge effect on people."

Whoah.