Humbled by a Weed

     It's Saturday, the traditional end of a Hairdressers week.It's quiet in the salon. The staff has left and are on their way to a well deserved rest and the pleasures that the weekend has to offer. I'll warn you that todays posting isn't what you might expect to find on blog for a hair salon but after 60 postings of traditional information,I thought I would try my hand at something a little different. I hope you don't mind and I assure you that come Tuesday, I'll be back to business as usual.
     I'm a smoker. I know that it's a nasty, vile habit that is detrimental to my health. My Doctor has told me countless times that I should quit and my wife hints at how happy she would be if I were to give up the cigarettes. I'm sure that I will soon, well that's the plan anyway. I do have some profound moments of inspired thought while quietly enjoying my habit in the alley next to the Salon. Today for example, while induldging myself in my habit, I noticed a curious situation that I'd not noticed before.A weed has taken root in between the building across the alley and the asphalt patch that the Street Department put down last summer. Bright, vibrant green, leafy, bushy and quite healthy it grows in defiance of the artifice that surrounds it, piles of bricks and morter, wood, concrete and the seemingly endless veneer of asphalt that spreads across the land.The mark of man's perceived dominance over everything upon the earth both great and small.

   Suddenly I felt very small next to this noble specimen that grew with no visible soil in which to spread its roots and thrive, living simply by its determination to live, to survive.I realizid in that moment that my existence was of no more importance than my noble, green companion.It made me think of how strong life's force is and how arrogant we are to think that we have the power  and the ingenuity to destroy the earth on which we live. The earth existed long before we became a blemish on its surface and so shall it continue long after we have gone. It has been a gracious host to our species but one day it shall grow tired of our greed, our arrogance, our lust for domination and shall chew us up and spit us out as something else and we shall be no more.

    As I finished up the last of my cigarette, I looked up and down the alleyway and beheld tufts of green growing everywhere, thriving in the filth of man's creation and I smiled to myself knowing that when we are gone, life shall continue on. I carefully snuffed out the remnant of my induldgence, threw it in the garbage can and went back into the Salon, all smiles to greet my next guest. I don't think the weed  paid any attention to the fact that I had left.