"on the last day of the world

I would want to plant a tree"

—W.S. Merwin, Place

Self-will tends toward the strategic. It asks whether an action will pay off, whether the investment will be worth it, whether what we are doing will matter in the end. Under that framework, planting a tree on the last day of the world would be irrational. There is no return. There is no future in which the investment is realized.

And yet something in Merwin's image feels completely sane. The planting is not about the outcome. It may be about the quality of presence—doing something life-giving because life-giving is what there is to do, regardless of what follows. Action like this may not be strategic or calculated. It may be something simpler: an offering, made freely, without the need for a return.