After reading more than 100 comments to your LJ post, I think that this book may be a good vehicle for revealing dramatically different views of "selfness" (as well as of parenting, and a few other things).
To me, the stump at the end is still "the tree" in just the same way the big, branchy, fruited creature was. Nothing that the tree has given of itself has diminished it in any way, has made it any less "the tree."
I think there may be a dramatic difference in worldview between those who see the tree as you do, a used-up shell of an annihilated self, and those who see it as I do: changed in form, changed by life and time, but still itself.
no subject
To me, the stump at the end is still "the tree" in just the same way the big, branchy, fruited creature was. Nothing that the tree has given of itself has diminished it in any way, has made it any less "the tree."
I think there may be a dramatic difference in worldview between those who see the tree as you do, a used-up shell of an annihilated self, and those who see it as I do: changed in form, changed by life and time, but still itself.