THE OAK TREE AND THE REED

I was thinking this morning about Aesop's fable of The Oak Tree and the Reed, and of the later version by the French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine. The proud oak talks down to the poor, modest reed (oh, I know: oak trees can't talk; neither can reeds. But this is a fable!), pitying its lack of strength and grandeur. Comes a great wind, of course, and the tree is uprooted and blown down, while the reed simply bows before the storm, bending its head to accommodate the powerful wind... and survives.  The moral is that it's better to be flexible like the reed than rigid like the oak.

I am sometimes derided, online, for hewing to the Middle Path--especially when it comes to politics. In our fervor we tend to forget the value of subtle distinctions and are led off easily to the extremes. Yet it remains important, in my view, to bear in mind the difference between being judicious and being judgmental, between exercising appropriate discrimination and indulging in thoughtless prejudice, between the need to engage ideas with an open mind and resorting to the uncompromising rigidity of the ideologue.

We are beset from multiple quarters, in our current political and cultural environment, not just by a storm but by a tempest. If we follow the example of the boastful oak tree, we risk succumbing to our own rigidity. The persistence of our democratic heritage may depend on the wisdom to act more like the reed.