The old guard of shaggy untrimmed palms stand in the dry creek bed in the middle of the oak trees, the poison oak and various native scrub of Griffith Park. We walk by them many days when we take the back trail home up the side of the canyon and back into the the city streets.
Those palms don’t belong there. They may have been dropped by someone who threw out some plants from their yard over 50 years ago and the rain washed them into the canyon. They have never been trimmed of their beard like the manicured trees along city streets. They stand there brave and tall and scrubby and no longer wanted.
The fires of last January made us all look at the trees we used to love as fire-prone and dangerous. Palms and Eucalyptus in particular. I hissed at the neighbors to cut their Eucalyptus trees away from our houses and this year they cut them back. Now they get it.
When do those palm trees come to symbolize us as human beings? We are overgrown, unkempt and no longer belong in the location where we have had standing for decades?
The fear for humans is AI. It is sweeping through faster than we can keep up with. To stand there and say,” I’m good, I don’t need it”, is an option. You may be the first to go. Even those of us who are trying to use it everyday feel like we can’t keep up. Seth Godin , Vistage National Speaker in August, said everyone should be spending at least 2 hours a day immersed in it. Who has a job, a life AND an extra 30 minutes a day to spend on AI? I should be working out if that “extra time” exists! Don’t be blind to what is happening around you. Do a little exploration in this new forest.
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