resistance

‘Bend not break’ is sound advice. Adaptability or flexibility trump rigidity as a tactics in the face of adversity. The menace is temporary. Bend under its force and you will survive and rebound. Set yourself against it and you will break. This is the message of Aesop’s fable, ‘The Oak Tree and the Reeds.’

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s quite straightforward. The fable takes the form of a dialogue between a tree and a reed or reeds, possibly derived from Mesopotamian disputation poems which often featured trees. The tree boasts of its strength in withstanding the storm, the reeds consider themselves safer, and the reeds are proved right when the tree is uprooted in a gale. Jacobs picked up on the christian theme of humility, Townsend sees as a wise tactic, and Walter Crane, in his succinct verse treatment, concludes with the pithy ‘bend not break’.

I must have been taught this all the way back in junior school, with reference to the fable. The tactic was clear, the logic of self-preservation compelling, and the image of the bending reed memorable. And yet I don’t know that I have been able to put it into practice. My family, on my father’s side, are inveterate idealists who would stand up and be counted, the consequences be damned, and I too am inclined to call out injustice, to speak out of turn, to resist and refuse. It has got me into trouble.

‘Be like the reed’ counsels Aesop. I favour the tree. And I have found a counter-narrative.

Recent wet weather and passing storms have brought trees down where I live. Roads have been blocked. But it is not standing proud against the elements that was the problem, but rather the softening of the earth around their roots. The trees were made vulnerable by circumstances; they did what they always do, stand tall, but the insidious rain pulled the dirty rug from beneath them. This is the first point.

Next we see the converse: from the deluge to drought. These circumstances produce a different outcome. The roots of the reeds are exposed instead and it doesn’t take a storm to dislodge them. Their self-preserving timidity is cast aside. Thus we have a fable about roots, solidarity, and resistance. Something I fear has become all too relevant in the face of a this inhospitable political climate.

You can read it here: ‘The Alder and the Reeds‘.

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