One of our forefathers’ stories tells us that the first tree sprang from the burial mound of two gods - an evil one slain, a benevolent one done in by illness. The evil one, Ulilang Kaluluwa, was a serpent; their long body became the first tree’s trunk. The benevolent one, Galang Kaluluwa, was a face with wings on each side; their form became the First Tree’s fruit and leaves. The third god, Bathala, who killed Ulilang Kaluluwa and nursed Galang Kaluluwa, still weeping tears of mourning, saw the First Tree and dubbed it Coconut.
The two gods’ deaths were not in vain; nothing ever goes to waste in nature. After Bathala molded the first Man and Woman out of clay and set them out into the world, the couple came upon the First Tree and made a dwelling out of its parts. The wood from its trunk became the posts for their hut, while the leaves were dried and used as roofing. The Man cut open the tree’s fruit with his bolo and sweet water came flowing out; he and his wife drank the water and feasted upon the flesh. The Woman, being a little wiser, used the halved husk to clean their hut, and when they raised cattle she fed them cakes made of the leftover meat. When their first child became sick, they nursed him with oil from the tree’s roots. Thus the First Tree gained a new name, this time dubbed by the Man and Woman: the Tree of Life. Maybe Bathala put medicine in the coconut’s roots so that no child may grow sick like his friend Galang Kaluluwa. We cannot be certain.
What we can be certain of is that the coconut has a great many lessons for us. The coconut makes sure nothing goes to waste, just as the crafty Filipino mother makes sinangag out of rice gone cold and paksiw out of yesterday’s lechon. “Waste is a design flaw,” said investor Carlo Delantar at an online talk I attended last year. How might we design physical spaces where nothing goes to waste? Us humans coined the term circular economy, but nature has been practicing it for eons. When something dies (and we have to face the fact that we will too), the cleanup crew gets to work. Earthworm calls out to Termite and Millipede and Mushroom: “Time to feast!”
Nothing goes to waste in nature. We need to practice circularity not as a novel concept, but as a return. Nature was our first teacher when our tongues were still dumb, and foremost of those teachers was Coconut, who, like the stern Woman (now a wife and mother) tells us, her children, not to let anything go to waste.
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