on cherry blossoms

The Cherry Orchard and reflections on wealth

The cherry orchard that survives in Chekhov’s play of the same name is not the one that we are greeted to within its first pages. We are greeted in a land of mystique, one where color and business and the Earth thrive as one. It is the Ranevskaya family’s prized possession, and rightfully so.

For without the orchard, the land on which they have made their livelihood, the land under which their reputation thrives, the Ranevskayas are another family in community around them. They are not the community themselves. Remove it and the structure collapses, revealing what was always true: they are ordinary people who happened to inherit something extraordinary

Wealth has a way of narrowing vision even as it expands possibility. Even in the broadest of fields, the largest of communities, we are unable to see past our own reflection. It was only a matter of time before the Ranevskayas stood in their beloved orchard unable to see the world reshaping itself around them. They are cherry blossoms mistaking themselves for the tree. Beautiful, beloved, and already falling.