Your Roots Are Showing

I'm sure a botanist would know why it is that so many things in the tropics have their roots showing. Well, it must be partly to do with the climate. No frost.

For example, there was the big tree at Goa Gajah that we practised under on the last morning. This one on the right with Thérèse in it. It has these extraordinary roots like old lizards that hardly bother to go under ground at all. There must be other roots that do go underground or it would fall over. But what's the point? They can't be getting much nutrition out here in the baking open.

Then there was the banyan tree with its roots hanging down from the sky in torrents. It's clear enough what they're up to -- trying to get a foothold so the tree can extend itself, grow, renew and multiply. It's a nifty reproductive approach, provided the locals don't come and trim your roots every year. I think Usha swang or swung in the one at Mendut.

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Talking of reproduction, I was thinking about the enormous effort that a coconut has to put into it. Months of growing that nut, filling it with up to a litre of coconut milk, dropping it on the ground and then the agonising wait for one to settle somewhere it can grow. An acorn or a sycamore helicopter would seem much simpler. A cloud of seed from a willow simpler and more effective still. Still, coconut palms are doing fine (presumably with some help from their human supporters). But surely they could get by with something less exhausting? [By the by, it seems to me that all mammals are coconuts in the extraordinary effort they expend on their offspring. But perhaps just as well. Imagine if we walked round like dandelions spraying babies everywhere. Suddenly population would be a real issue. Hmm.]

Ah, I think there's a point looming through the rooty fog: what's my coconut equivalent? Instead of slaving over an exhausting 5-pound coconut, how could I produce a few hundred acorns or a few million dandelion seeds? I don't mean for reproduction; I mean in the effort I put into daily life activities. Where is my effort out of proportion?

I was just starting to get somewhere with this... treading more lightly on the earth in various ways, when I discovered The Coconut Research Centre. It could, admittedly, be a mite biased, but it says that:

"Published studies in medical journals show that coconut, in one form or another, may provide a wide range of health benefits: 

• Kills viruses that cause influenza, herpes, measles, hepatitis C, SARS, AIDS, and other illnesses.
  
• Kills bacteria that cause ulcers, throat infections, urinary tract infections, gum disease and cavities, pneumonia, and gonorrhea, and other diseases.
  
• Kills fungi and yeasts that cause candidiasis, ringworm, athlete's foot, thrush, diaper rash, and other infections.
  
• Expels or kills tapeworms, lice, giardia, and other parasites.
  
• Provides a nutritional source of quick energy.
  
• Boosts energy and endurance, enhancing physical and athletic performance.
  
• Improves digestion and absorption of other nutrients including vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
  
• Improves insulin secretion and utilization of blood glucose.
  
• Relieves stress on pancreas and enzyme systems of the body.
  
• Reduces symptoms associated with pancreatitis.
  
• Helps relieve symptoms and reduce health risks associated with diabetes.
  
• Reduces problems associated with malabsorption syndrome and cystic fibrosis.
  
• Improves calcium and magnesium absorption and supports the development of strong bones and teeth.
  
• Helps protect against osteoporosis.
  
• Helps relieve symptoms associated with gallbladder disease.
  
• Relieves symptoms associated with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and stomach ulcers.
  
• Improves digestion and bowel function.
  
• Relieves pain and irritation caused by hemorrhoids.
  
• Reduces inflammation.
  
• Supports tissue healing and repair.
  
• Supports and aids immune system function.
  
• Helps protect the body from breast, colon, and other cancers.
  
• Is heart healthy; improves cholesterol ratio reducing risk of heart disease.
  
• Protects arteries from injury that causes atherosclerosis and thus protects against heart disease.
  
• Helps prevent periodontal disease and tooth decay.
  
• Functions as a protective antioxidant.
  
• Helps to protect the body from harmful free radicals that promote premature aging and degenerative disease.
  
• Does not deplete the body's antioxidant reserves like other oils do.
  
• Improves utilization of essential fatty acids and protects them from oxidation.
  
• Helps relieve symptoms associated with chronic fatigue syndrome.
  
• Relieves symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (prostate enlargement).
  
• Reduces epileptic seizures.
  
• Helps protect against kidney disease and bladder infections.
  
• Dissolves kidney stones.
  
• Helps prevent liver disease.
  
• Is lower in calories than all other fats.
  
• Supports thyroid function.
  
• Promotes loss of excess weight by increasing metabolic rate.
  
• Is utilized by the body to produce energy in preference to being stored as body fat like other dietary fats.
  
• Helps prevent obesity and overweight problems.
  
• Applied topically helps to form a chemical barrier on the skin to ward of infection.
  
• Reduces symptoms associated the psoriasis, eczema, and dermatitis.
  
• Supports the natural chemical balance of the skin.
  
• Softens skin and helps relieve dryness and flaking.
  
• Prevents wrinkles, sagging skin, and age spots.
  
• Promotes healthy looking hair and complexion.
  
• Provides protection from damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
  
• Helps control dandruff.
  
• Does not form harmful by-products when heated to normal cooking temperature like other vegetable oils do.
  
• Has no harmful or discomforting side effects.
  
• Is completely non-toxic to humans."
  

Crikey. Even dandruff. Now, instead of berating the coconut for its wasteful excess and careless inefficiencies, perhaps I should reframe and love it for its extraordinary medical generosity. Perhaps, in the same way, my own excesses and inefficiencies are unnecessarily disapproved of? Underrated?

And then my Java buddy sends me this from David Whyte:

"We have an even stranger idea: that we will finally fall in love with ourselves only when we have become the totally efficient organizational organism we have always wanted to be and left all of our bumbling ineptness behind. Yet in exactly the way we come to find love and intimacy in others through vulnerability, we come to those same qualities in ourselves through living out the awkwardness of not knowing, of not being in charge.

We try to construct a life in which we will be perfect, in which we will eliminate awkwardness, pass by vulnerability, ignore ineptness, only to pass through the gate of our lives and find, strangely, that the gateway is vulnerability itself. The very place we are open to the world whether we like it or not."

 It's exactly the right thing to say to me at exactly the right time.