"It is a wise man who plants a tree under the shade of which he knows he will never sit."
I came across the above quote in an article published months ago in ESPN Magazine about the poisoned trees on Toomer's Corner in Auburn. I've tried to hunt down its origins, but so far I have only found non-authoritative sources suggesting that it comes from a Greek proverb.
The figurative notion it conveys is nothing new, and is one that applies in so many of life's active arenas. It is a matter of generational legacy: what values, what faith, what freedom, what ideals are we passing down to our children? Is the foundation eroding underneath us inevitable, can it be prevented, and do we even care? As a society, there's plenty of doom and gloom to go around, and it seems certain that tomorrow will look different from today even as much as today is far different from yesterday. It takes focused, controlled energy to counter entropy. In physics, disorder is more probable than order. Time will tell if this is true of us as a nation as well.
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