-- *Mar*Of course 🌿 — here’s an *original short story* inspired by your essay *“Misunderstanding”*, your reflections on false education, and the idea that only nature gives true learning.
It’s titled *“The Student of the Forest.”* ------------------------------ *The Student of the Forest* Long ago — or perhaps only yesterday — there was a young student named Arin. He studied at one of the finest universities in the city. The buildings were tall and glassy; their walls hummed with machines. The students spoke in formulas and deadlines, not in silences or songs. Arin loved learning, but something inside him stayed restless. The professors spoke of life, but never lived it. They taught about forests, but the only trees around were printed in textbooks. One afternoon, while sitting in the air-conditioned library, Arin suddenly felt he couldn’t breathe. The air was cold, but it wasn’t alive. So he walked out. He left the gates of the university and kept walking until the cement turned into soil. The air began to move differently — it smelled of roots and rain. He wandered into a forest he had never seen before, and something strange happened: he stopped *thinking*. He began *feeling*. He sat under a tree, and the tree seemed to speak — not in words, but in presence. Its bark rough, its leaves trembling in sunlight, its patience older than books. A stream nearby whispered, and a bird called his name — not the name from his ID card, but the name he had forgotten. Days passed, or perhaps hours — in that forest, time had no edges. Arin learned without being taught. He learned that silence has many dialects. He learned that fear disappears when one listens deeply. He learned that to know the world is not to define it, but to belong to it. When he finally returned to the university, everything looked different. The buildings seemed tired. The words on the blackboard looked pale and frightened. His friends were busy memorizing for exams, but Arin’s heart was full of green light. A professor asked him where he had been. “Studying,” Arin said simply. “Studying? Where?” “In the oldest university on Earth,” he replied. “The one with no walls and no fees. The one that teaches through rain and roots.” The professor smiled politely, not understanding. But the tree outside the window bent slightly in the wind, as if bowing to its student. And from that day on, Arin never misunderstood again. ------------------------------ Would you like me to write a *companion story* — perhaps told *from the point of view of nature itself*, watching humans misunderstand her? That would create a poetic contrast to this one. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCKSvPwibd4rrt8V4O74P2iDu7PtkD-ndzGQKb9VwORQxg%40mail.gmail.com.
