Of what use are the trees?

Girls and boys are different. Duh, I know. Women and men are different too. Whoa, not exactly a revelation either.

I have made an observation however that might not be quite as obvious.

There is not nearly as much of a difference between a girl and a woman as there is between a boy and a man. This is just my opinion as observed from my perspective.

Girls seem to become women rather abruptly, it just kind of happens one day. It is a common understanding that girls mature faster than boys, but I submit to you that the reason is because they never really have to change as much as boys do.

Before you go getting all Grumpy Guss with me, this is complimentary towards the finer gender.

Girls ( metaphor warning ) are like flowers. When they are young, they are beautiful little buds. As they mature they become blossoms, and then as they age they open up into mature beautiful flowers. Some flowers are strong and hardy and stand up well to wind, rain, drought, and frost, while others wilt easily. Some flowers thrive in harsh conditions while others only grow with constant nurturing and fertile soil. All are beautiful flowers none the less.

The boy to man transition is not nearly so attractive. Boys are ( another metaphor warning ) like nuts laying on the ground. They look almost nothing like what they might grow up to be, a tree. Boys first must learn to not get eaten by squirrels or they will never take root. Most do take root, but then we spend years and years growing o' so slowly as a sapling. During the sapling stage our outer protective skin is thin and scars easily, but this is wear the bark comes in. If we scar too much as a sapling we grow think and nearly impenetrable bark in our maturity. As young trees we are still green and relatively flexible, but as we age we become stiffer and harder and we don't conform as well as we used to. The transition from nut to tree is extremely different than from bud to flower. It is a whole lot slower for one thing, and it is a bigger transition from start to finish for another. ( again, this is my male opinion )

Another difference is that flowers have purpose, but trees have uses.

What kind of flower a girl becomes does not seem to affect the fact that she is a flower. ( not in my eyes anyway, but some might argue ) In contrast, however, what kind of tree a man becomes affects how the world views him.

Of what use are the trees, do we bear fruit? Are we cut for lumber ? Do we just drop our nuts randomly around the forest ? Do we stand strong against storms but still have enough sap in us to bend a little with the wind? Is our bark so thick and ugly that we go unnoticed? Is our canopy full of dead branches that fall and litter the ground? Are we to be burnt up to keep others warm ?

Of what use are the trees ?