THE TWO TREES AND THE THREE FORCES
Most people sense that human life runs on more than matter and thought.
We feel pulled between what we want, what we believe, and who we hope to be.
Every day, even in small choices, we feel the tension between fear and courage, resentment and forgiveness, compromise and conviction.
We do not experience ourselves as machines.
We do not navigate life as computers.
There is a third force inside us—something neither physical nor intellectual.
It shows up every time we choose to tell the truth, or stay silent, or betray our own conscience.
It appears when we forgive someone who hurt us, or cling to bitterness instead.
It appears when we choose to stand for what is right even when it costs us.
This third force—the will, or volition—is where a human life is actually shaped.
And strangely, though we live inside this drama every day, our culture rarely speaks about it.
Modern science explains bodies.
Modern philosophy analyzes thoughts.
Modern psychology maps emotions.
But the will, the inner faculty that decides between the person we are and the person we could be—this is rarely mentioned, as if it were impolite or unscientific to acknowledge.
Yet the will is where the world changes.
A society is nothing more than millions of wills choosing either courage or fear, truth or falsehood, forgiveness or resentment.
This insight is ancient.
Long before psychology and philosophy, the earliest stories of our civilization spoke about it through a symbol so simple a child can understand it:
two trees.
THE TWO TREES: A STORY ABOUT WHERE WE GET OUR WAY OF SEEING
In the old story, the world begins with two trees placed close together.
One tree represents life.
Not just breathing, but clarity, peace, trust—being at one with the Good.
Its fruit nourishes a way of seeing the world without rivalry, without needing to climb over others to prove our worth.
The other tree represents a different way of seeing:
the habit of judging ourselves and others, the urge to compete, the fear that we’re not enough, the sense that the world is scarce and someone must lose so we can win.
Call these two ways of seeing:
the way of life, and
the way of rivalry.
The story says humanity reached for the fruit of rivalry.
And ever since, we have carried that pattern inside us.
We know its signs:
insecurity masked as confidence
comparison disguised as ambition
resentment boiling beneath politeness
desire for control camouflaged as responsibility
fear hidden behind sophistication
This “rivalry way of seeing” becomes a lineage of thinking, passed on from generation to generation, shaping our culture, our institutions, and our relationships.
The story insists:
Humanity didn’t just make a mistake.
We inherited a lens that distorts the world.
That is the first doctrine.
THE THREE FORCES: A STORY ABOUT WHY WE FEEL TORN
Everyone knows what it feels like to be stretched in three directions at once.
Our body craves comfort, security, and pleasure.
Our mind wants explanations, patterns, analysis.
But our will—that inner force that decides—wants something different:
it wants meaning, truth, alignment with the Good.
These three forces are always in tension:
The body says: avoid pain.
The mind says: find certainty.
The will says: choose what is right.
Most of our suffering comes from trying to resolve this tension by pretending one of these forces is the whole of who we are.
But we are not just bodies.
Not just minds.
Not even just wills.
We are a living triad.
And the moral life—the meaningful life—comes from learning how to align the will toward the Good even when the body trembles or the mind protests.
This insight—that human beings are threefold, and that the center is volition—is the second doctrine.
THE PROBLEM: A RIVALROUS LENS + A DIVIDED WILL
Once you see the world through the story of the two trees and the three forces, a puzzle suddenly becomes clear:
Why do people do what they know is wrong?
Why do we betray our own ideals?
Why do nations built on noble principles drift into corruption?
Why does progress never stay?
Why do technologies meant to liberate us end up controlling us?
Why do revolutions turn into new tyrannies?
Why do relationships decay even when love is present?
Because:
We inherited a rivalrous way of seeing the world, and
Our wills are constantly pressured by body and intellect to take the easy path.
This is not pessimism.
It is realism.
It is the human condition described without sentimentality.
But the story does not end there.
THE HOPE: A NEW WAY OF SEEING + A STRONGER WILL
In the ancient story, someone appears who does not carry the rivalrous inheritance.
Someone who sees clearly.
Someone whose will is perfectly aligned with the Good.
Someone who teaches a new way of life—not by theory alone, but by living it under pressure.
His message is simple:
“The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Meaning:
The “realm” where the human will can align with the Good is not locked behind ritual, scholarship, or achievement.
It is available now, every moment you choose truth over falsehood, forgiveness over resentment, courage over fear.
In that moment your will participates in a different inheritance.
You begin to see through a different lens.
You choose from a different root.
This is not mystical.
It is existential.
Every time you choose what is right even when it costs you—
Every time you forgive when you could resent—
Every time you tell the truth when a lie would protect you—
Every time you relinquish power instead of seizing it—
—you are aligning with life rather than rivalry.
You are stepping into a different genealogy:
the lineage of trust, peace, and truth.
This is not metaphor.
It is the lived experience of transformation.
THE WORLD MADE NEW BY TINY DECISIONS
Most people believe the world changes through politics, power, revolutions, or technologies.
But the story says otherwise.
A single human decision—to act in truth rather than fear—has more cosmic weight than the rise and fall of empires.
Empires are built from fear and rivalry.
Kingdoms of life are built from decisions of the will.
Every person contains both trees inside them.
Every moment opens a path to either lineage.
And a society is nothing more than the accumulation of billions of tiny decisions:
whether to love or to resent
whether to forgive or to punish
whether to tell truth or protect ego
whether to trust or to grasp
whether to serve or to dominate
The world is changed the same way a soul is changed:
through the will aligning with life rather than rivalry.
A SIMPLE WAY TO SAY IT
Here is the entire synthesis in one sentence:
There are two ways of seeing the world, and three forces inside each of us, and the future of humanity depends on which way our wills choose to follow.
That is the narrative version.
No jargon.
Nothing esoteric.
Just the truth we all already know but rarely articulate:
Human beings stand between two trees.
Our wills decide what we become.
And every choice we make—small or large—reveals which world we are helping bring into being.