the tree remembers what the axe forgets

reflections on the school of life, inspired by elif shafak

if you know anything about me, you would know that:

1. i LOVE reading

2. i LOVE elif shafak

some may even say that i’m her biggest fan - her words have a way of reaching into your soul and rearranging what you thought you knew about life. i’ve recently been making my way through her novel “there are rivers in the sky”, in which she shares two passages that feel less like fiction and more like lessons we were meant to remember: one on the nature of life as a school, the other on the haunting consequences of hatred and the memory of pain.

the first passage is as follows:

“well, this world is a school and we are its students. each of us studies something as we pass through. some people learn love, kindness. others, i’m afraid, abuse and brutality. but the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. the ones who choose not to inflict their suffering onto others. and what you learn is what you take with you to your grave.”

when i stumbled upon this quote, i felt as though it was speaking directly to me. as of recently, as some of you may have gathered, i’ve been on a journey of healing, of turning my pain into power. and this quote felt like a direct invitation to reflect on my own life and the lessons i’ve been learning behind the scenes. i began to ask myself: what have i truly learned from my pain?

i think many of us, at some point, have found ourselves trapped in the chaos of life. we face losses, rejections, betrayals, or heartaches that leave us wondering if we’ll ever truly heal. and in the midst of these experiences, we often feel like we’re simply surviving. we try to cope with the weight of it all, hoping for the day the storm will finally pass. but what if survival isn’t the ultimate goal? what if the real test isn’t just getting through the pain, but how we choose to be shaped by it?

pain can hollow you out, or it can carve you into something deeper. sometimes we think we’ve healed because we’ve buried the pain. but pain buried alive doesn’t die—it waits. it lingers around. and it shows up in how we speak, how we love, how we trust. healing isn’t pretending the wound never existed, but allowing it to breathe, and to finally be acknowledged.

this world is a school, but not everyone graduates. some people live and die never learning the lessons that were meant to be learned. they carry their pain without ever understanding its purpose, and as a result, they remain stuck and bitter. but you—you still have time. you have the opportunity to rewrite your story, and to transform your pain into something beautiful.

in the moments where the weight of the world feels unbearable, remember: you have the power to let your pain purify you, not poison you. pain doesn’t have to define you. it doesn’t have to make you bitter or cold. you can choose to be the tree that still stands tall, offering shade to others, even when your own branches are weighed down by the scars of past wounds.

because the hardest test in this “school of life” is not simply enduring suffering, it’s choosing goodness when life has shown you nothing but harm. anyone can be kind when life is kind to them, but true mercy is shown when life has dealt you cruelty. it’s easy to love when you’ve been loved in return. it’s much harder to love when your heart has been broken, when you’ve been wronged, when you’ve been abandoned. but this is where the reward lies. the true measure of your character is how you respond to the pain that life throws at you.

Allah (SWT) says in the Quran:

“respond to evil with what is best, then the one you are in a feud with will be like a close friend.” (41:34)

this verse was difficult for me to understand at first. how could i possibly be good to someone who has hurt me? but the deeper i delved into it, the clearer the message became: it’s not about the other person. it’s about you. it’s about the kind of person you choose to be, regardless of how others treat you. it’s about keeping your heart soft, not allowing the hardness of others to infect you. and most importantly, it’s about knowing that Allah sees everything, even when no one else does.

there’s also a deeper layer to this that i’ve come to realise. the best students in this life—those who learn the most valuable lessons—don’t just endure hardship, they transform through it. they don’t carry their pain and bitterness forward; instead, they allow it to shape them into more compassionate, generous, and loving individuals. they sit with their pain, but instead of letting it turn into anger or resentment, they hand it over to Allah. and when they do, it becomes a source of light for others.

healing, then, is not passive. it’s not something that simply happens over time. healing is a choice. a series of choices, really. to show up for yourself. to be gentle with yourself. to ask for help when you need it. to stop blaming yourself for the harm someone else caused. to let go of the desire for revenge, not because they deserve peace—but because you do.

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so, we’ve learnt that pain can be transformative.

the second passage resonates just as deeply:

“hatred is a poison served in three cups. the first is when people despise those they desire—because they want to have them in their possession. it’s all out of hubris! the second is when people loathe those they do not understand. it’s all out of fear! then there is the third kind—when people hate those they have hurt.”

“but why?”

“because the tree remembers what the axe forgets.”

the tree remembers what the axe forgets. that line has stayed with me since i first read it, and i’m not too sure why. i think it’s because it so accurately describes the painful nature of human relationships. people hurt you, and sometimes, they don’t even realise it. they forget. they move on, unaffected, while you—like the tree—are left to carry the scars. you’re the one who remembers. you’re the one who feels the weight of their actions long after they’ve forgotten.

but those first two cups of hatred carry their own kind of grief, too.

the first cup, the hatred that comes from desire, is strange, because it’s not really about hate at all. it’s about wanting something, or someone, so much that it turns into resentment. not because they hurt you, but because they wouldn’t be yours. and there’s something so painful in being desired only as something to possess. it’s not love, it’s control wearing love’s clothes. and when people can’t have that control, they turn cold. they act like it’s your fault for being out of reach, when in reality you know you haven’t done anything wrong. you were just being you.

then the second cup, the cup that’s been poured onto me my entire life: the kind of hatred that stems from not being understood. it’s not loud. it doesn’t always shout. sometimes, it just looks like indifference. like distance. like assumptions. it’s when your existence makes someone uncomfortable—not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because you challenge the narrowness of their worldview. maybe your choices unsettle them. maybe your presence reminds them of something they’re not ready to confront. so instead of asking, they assume. instead of listening, they retreat. and slowly, they build a version of you in their mind that feels easier to reject. it hurts—not because you need their approval, but because you deserved curiosity and got judgment instead.

but the third cup… that one, i think, is the most painful.

it’s when someone hurts you, and instead of facing what they’ve done, they turn away from it entirely. they can’t bear to look at you—not because of what you are, but because of what they’ve done to you. so they start to resent you. to hate you. because if they acknowledged your pain, they’d have to see themselves clearly—and that’s something not everyone can do.

you weren’t the problem.
you were the mirror.
and mirrors are often the first things people break when they can’t face themselves.

so they forget. or pretend to. they erase the wound. they rewrite the story. and in their version, you were never really hurt. or you had it coming. or they did what they had to do. it’s easier that way.

but the tree remembers what the axe forgets.

i remember when i was in the midst of heartbreak, reflecting on the hurt i was feeling. the pain wasn’t just in what they did, but in the way they never acknowledged it, never apologised, never even seemed to care. and i found myself wondering, did it even matter to them? was it all one sided? but the more i questioned, the more i realised that waiting for validation or closure from someone who didn’t care enough to give it was only keeping me stuck in that moment.

that’s when i decided to release it—to stop trying to prove my hurt, to stop waiting for closure. i handed it to Allah, trusting that He sees everything, even the things that go unnoticed by others. Allah is Al-Basir, the All-Seeing. He saw the pain, even when the axe forgot. and i found peace in that.

however, here’s the hardest truth of all: even as the tree, you still have a choice. you can remember the hurt and still choose not to become the axe. you can acknowledge the wound and still refuse to wound others. the pain you carry doesn’t have to turn you into someone who hurts in return. you can carry it with grace. you can let your branches bear fruit, even if they’ve been scarred. this is where true mercy lies.

mercy is not weakness. forgiveness is not forgetting. healing does not mean denying what was done to you, it means refusing to let it define you. the choice is yours. you can choose to let your pain make you stronger, kinder, more compassionate. or you can let it turn you cold, unable to see the good in the world because of the hurt you’ve endured.

so learn. be the student that Allah loves. learn from your heartbreak without becoming bitter. learn from your loneliness without becoming cold. learn from your pain without turning it into punishment for others. you do not have to pass on the suffering to feel seen. Allah saw you. Allah always sees you. and when you choose mercy, you are not letting anyone off the hook—you are placing yourself in His care. you are allowing Him to take over the justice you were never meant to carry alone.

you are not weak for feeling deeply. you are not foolish for hoping. and you are not naive for choosing softness in a world that keeps offering you reasons to be sharp. this school is not easy, but its curriculum is sacred. you are here to learn something only hardship can teach: sabr, ihsan, tawakkul and taqwa.

pain is not a curse—it is a teacher. and the lessons it offers can either break you or build you. it’s all in how you respond.

because in the end, what you take with you to your grave is not the pain. it’s the love you gave in spite of it. and that love, the kind that comes from a heart that has been wounded but still chooses to forgive, to heal, to soften—that love weighs heavy on the scale. and it is not forgotten.

so when the time comes for you to meet your Lord, and the book of your life is opened, let it show that you were one of the best students. let it show that you didn’t just survive, you softened. you didn’t just endure, you healed. you remembered what the axe forgot, and you still chose love.

because the tree remembers what the axe forgets.

and that, in the end, is not a curse.

it’s a miracle.

love, imaan x

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