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Snuggsian Safety

February 18, 2004

When I was a kid, I loved to climb trees. My favorite was the giant macrocarpa that towered over our home. From its highest branches, I felt like the king of the neighborhood. I guess I would have hurt myself had I fallen. Thankfully, my parents didn't cower in the face of this risk. They let that tree be a part of my boyhood.

For 140 years, kids growing up in the English village of Fair Oak have had their childhoods enriched by a churchyard yew tree. But no longer. The vicar, the Rev David Snuggs, has just had it felled.

The yew tree, you see, was a WMD. It might let kids fall from its branches. It might poison them with the pips in its berries. Its wide trunk might let paedophiles lurk unseen. None of these things had ever happened ("We've never had paedophiles around here, and certainly none hiding behind that tree," said the woman in the village shop). Rev Snuggs, however, wanted to pre-empt such carnage, so he hired a man with a chainsaw.

Residents of Fair Oaks were outraged. The vicar remained unrepentant. "The distress and hassle I'm experiencing now is preferable to taking a child's funeral," he said. "People are more important than trees." 

Do you have a Rev Snuggs living inside you? I do. When I listen too much to his fearful voice, I wrap myself in a cocoon in an absurd effort to keep myself safe.

But life isn't meant to be about safety. It's meant to be about growth. Former Education Secretary Shirley Hufstedler expressed it beautifully: "If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow any more."

Playing high up in that old macrocarpa tree, I grew. Yes, there were risks. But a childhood spent timidly at ground level would have carried greater risks by far. The same applies in adulthood. We stunt our growth if we focus too much on safety. "Life," Helen Keller said, "is either a daring adventure or nothing."

The reality, Rev Snuggs, is that there are no safe options. When we accept this, then ironically we do indeed find a form of safety. As William Blake put it 200 years ago:

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Through the world we safely go.