Towards the Sun

Winter Solstice. I went up to the roof today and saw that the seedlings in the blue nursery pot nearest the door had grown beautifully. Their heart-shaped cotyledons opened like hands, embracing the sunlight, while the true leaves poked out from between them, exploring the world outside. What's interesting is that the pot holds more than one kind of plant: the taller ones, whose true leaves are crinkled, are round white radishes; the shorter ones, with purple stems, are purple choy sum. And yet, seen from the side, they stand as neatly as a line of soldiers. From the front, they all show the same green leaves; from behind, the leaves lift from their undersides at exactly the same angle. This is the shared phototropism of plants. To claim more sunlight, different species have evolved the same sensitive light-sensing mechanism. The slightest difference in the angle of the sun's rays prompts cells in the shaded side of the stem to secrete more auxin, so that side grows faster than the lit side. The whole plant thus bends slightly toward the light. Different vegetables, all with the same habit of turning toward the sun.

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And in this human world of ours, are we not the same? Each of us with our own name, our own joys and sorrows, scattered across different soils. Yet so long as a patch of clear sky remains within us, we will, over the years, quietly and without ever having agreed on it, turn ourselves around and unfold our branches and leaves into that same sun-facing posture.