On Monday, 27 June 1853, a giant sequoia was brought to the ground by a band of gold-rush speculators in Calaveras county, California. It had taken the men three weeks to cut through the base of the 300-foot-tall tree which was 1,244-years old.
With modern equipment today 1000-year-old trees can be felled in a half an hour, give or take. If so inclined, one could do the same to the oldest tree in the world, a 5000-year-old bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California. (Its location is kept secret to protect it.)
The Buddhas of Bamyan were two 6th-century monumental statues of Gautam Buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan. They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban.
A thousand years of life snuffed out in minutes. One thousand four hundred years of history – not to mention a site sacred to millions of people – destroyed with a push of a button. So long . . . so short.
We must take care lest we do the same with relationships. A few words or a thoughtless act of indiscretion can endanger or destroy a relationship that had been years or decades in the making. Words can cut as surely as chainsaws. Actions can injure a loved one as surely as a bomb blast.
Caring consideration should be exercised with all of our words and actions. This approach should apply to life in general . . . but most particularly to our valued relationships. It is easier to hurt those we love than strangers. If we really love someone, excising chainsaw words and bomb blast actions will characterize our behavior.
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