Raindrops on Coconut Palm

Raindrops on Coconut Palm

I asked some of my students to list 10 important points about coconut tree as a creative thinking exercise and I couldn’t get anyone of them to think it as related to mother nature.

Then I told them we are the only animal species on planet earth who behave like aliens.

The coconut tree purifies the water and present us a drink superior to saline that we inject as a life support in an emergency. In the second world war it was used as saline substitute when things were in short supply.

It gives us water to drink.

It clears the carbon foot print of ours by taking in CO2 and releasing out O2.

The two most important things animal life need for its survival but yet we forget to mentioned them but obsessed with coconut milk and coconut oil.

Why?

We tend to think we are the only important living animals on this planet.

We are the only selfish animals on this planet.

That is true and will remain true for the current century unless we open ourselves to creative thinking and awareness of our mother nature.

We build houses.

We build roofs to protect us from rain and sun.

If we take the plant kingdom.

The story is different.

It lives by the day under sunlight but rest by night but never sleeps.

It takes rain as survival god never complains if there is snow or frost

They are in constant touch with nature and the air currents of change and wind

They are in harmony with all physical elements.

Remain and stay put for another day come sun or rain what it may.

When rain drops fall on the roof and runs through the gutters it makes a constant and a big racket and and I even  find it difficult to sleep at night.

But when rain drops falls on tree tops and leaves there is no rackety pitch.

We only hear the wind blowing but raindrops hardly make a noise. They gently touch the leaf surface and trickle down gently to the soil. No big gush and the roots soaks in as much so that the water that seeps through is clear.

But on a rainy day in a city we see all rubbish and mud that comes out of the gutters and finally minor floods all over the place till the rain ceases.

There are no tress with roots to soak the extra water.

Coming back to coconut tree it leaves take the water in a peculiar way not sen in other smaller leaves. The peculiar way it handles water make it and excellent covering for roofs and thatched coconut leaves that used to cover the village huts did not make a big racket on a rainy day but the asbestos sheets that cover us now are totally different and alien to mother nature.

Mind you the coconut tree takes all the shocks of thunder and lightening too.

If not many of us would be dead by lightening.

The golden rule was not to rest under a tall tree in a thunder storm.

None of these came out of my students’ creative thinking exercise.

What the hell the education system is doing to them in schools and university?

I do not know.

It is said that even in America in the first two years in the university they do not gain any extra incites or creativity.

Why?

Education is now a money spinner.

No more creativity left in it now.

Make money when going is good but leave the students without opportunities.