The Moral Vision
        
        
          The Life Force
        
        
          ~ 19 ~
        
        
          nature’s miracles that these tender leaves and buds,
        
        
          which can be so easily crushed to a pulp between
        
        
          finger and thumb, can summon up such strength as
        
        
          to force their way through bricks and cement.
        
        
          The owner of the house then regretted having
        
        
          attempted to take the creeper’s life. He remarked,
        
        
          “It is just as if it were appealing to me for the right
        
        
          to grow. Now I certainly won’t stand in its way.”
        
        
          And so saying, he removed some more of the bricks
        
        
          so that it would grow unhindered. In less than a
        
        
          year’s time, a fifteen-foot creeper was flourishing
        
        
          against the courtyard wall at the exact point from
        
        
          which it had been so unceremoniously ‘uprooted.’
        
        
          A mountain, despite its great height and girth,
        
        
          cannot remove so much as a pebble from its flanks.
        
        
          But these tiny tender buds of the tree can crack a
        
        
          cemented floor and sprout up through it. Whence
        
        
          such power? The source of its energy is the
        
        
          mysterious phenomenon of our world called life.
        
        
          Life is an astonishing, ongoing process of this
        
        
          universe—a force which will claim its rights in this
        
        
          world, and, even when uprooted, it continues to
        
        
          exist, albeit dormant, at one place or the other and