Have you ever had a conversation with a tree? I have.
One night I was sat on a bench by the train tracks with a book, enjoying the cool breeze, the sounds of the city, the occasional dogwalker passing by, or the low hum of a car engine winding around the bend. Those things weren’t distracting to me, but I heard the loudest silence coming from behind me; a tree was begging for my attention. Its shadow lay cast on the ground in front of me. It was in that moment it dawned on me, that a shadow is one of the very few two-dimensional constructs we can observe in our three-dimensional world.
Furthermore, the amount of data that is lost when transitioning from the third to the second dimension is astounding. Encoded in that extra spatial dimension is so much incredible detail, and it got me wondering – could we ever derive that data from a shadow alone? Would it ever be possible to take the shadow of a tree, and know its rough bark texture? The changing colors of the leaves, the insects that make a home of it, the woodpeckers that find their dinner in it, the scent of its blossoms or the juicy fruit it will bear? The oxygen it breathes into the world, its roots laced throughout the mycelial network underground, the noise of its rustling leaves, the warmth of the sun, I could go on.
The same is true for anything in our world. The shadow only knows shape, not essence.
And what if we are the same? What if this life, this body, this mind, this personality, is a three-dimensional shadow of something far greater? A higher-dimensional self that we cannot fully comprehend? We are like that tree’s shadow, unaware of the boundless beauty, connection, and depth that lives beyond the edges of our perception.
We might catch glimpses in dreams, déjà vu, or deep meditative states. But most of the time, we navigate the world like shadows, flattened versions of something richer, radiant, and infinite.
What if your love, your pain, your awe in the face of a sunset, all of it is just a flicker of a multidimensional truth? What if we’re rooted in something vast, timeless, and whole?
I like to think so.
