“The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree”
It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard
When an apple falls from the tree there is nothing to look up to other than the very same tree it fell from. And in time that one little apple will grow up to be exactly like the tree that it fell from. This aphorism is easy to understand in that sense. However not all apples that fall from the tree falls near to the tree. There are a wide variety of different scenarios that may change that apple’s life.
In so many ways the aphorism is also true. Due to Biology an apple or in a more realistic case a child cannot turn into another species, or rather into someone with different DNA and genetics[l1] . There is nothing anyone can do to alter or change the DNA that a person has. In which the aphorism would be very true. A child and his or her parents are very much alike based on genetics and DNA.
Although genetics in biology also have a way of skipping one or many generations and not revealing itself until many generations later. In this case the genes are the same from the parents to the child; however the phenotype is different causing the child to not necessarily looking like the parents but maybe someone else from the family “tree”.
But then again, what about nature verses nurture? Nature would ultimately adhere to the aphorism and reveal that the apple would turn out to be exactly like the tree. However the nurture side would argue that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree granted that no one else picks up the apple and cares for it until it has ripened. Nurture would disagree with nature in the sense that other things affecting and influencing the apple would shape the apple more than the parents of the apple ever could.
There are many twins out there who adhere to this aphorism and just as many that do not. There have been studies done where twins were split up from birth and the twins turned out to be exactly alike and other studies that the twins turn out unlike each other and more like the parents who raised each child.
In a much different take on this aphorism, there are children out there who have seen who their parents are and vow never to have this aphorism said about them. The child may not be able to get away from their parents genetically but they do have a choice as far as mannerisms, characteristics, and decisions that their parents have made.
Robert Fulghum once said “Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you”. At a very young age the child may not realize what is right from wrong but as they get older this is what determines how far the apple falls from the tree. A young child may not understand the actions and the consequences that accompany the parents’ choices and as the child grows up he or she most likely will idolize their parents and try in every possible way to become more like them. Then as they grow older and don’t have a grasp on how to make wise decisions and learn from their parents’ mistakes then they will continue to follow in their parents’ footsteps and prove the aphorism true the other side to this particular aspect starts off rather similar but ends up quite differently. Of course the child will grow up wanting to be exactly like his or her parents but then somewhere along the way the child realizes that throughout life their parents have made some decision that they themselves do not want to make and in this case the apple will fall a good distance away from the tree.
China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC Confucius once said “Gravity is only the bark of wisdom's tree but it preserves it.” Most of the time the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree but there are those few times in which an apple falls from the tree and rolls far away.
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