That is Adam's race. Cut off from its LifeSource. It flourishes for a while. It can look and smell good. We can dress it up with all kinds of bling. We can surround it with feasting and fun. But there's no life in it. It's decaying by the minute. And it's end is the rubbish dump.
I found buying one with the roots attached makes for a more enduring version...
Given this, isn't it obvious that we have some that choose fake plastic trees to try and avoid the rotting and decay?
Sorry, I could resist the Radiohead song link.
The fake plastic tree that my parents bought for my second Christmas lasted through the third, and even (just about) the twenty-third, but gravity always wins - the moulting and decay through use meant it end up getting thrown out after that 23rd outing. The new one will last less than half that.
And of course, the fake plastic stuff was never living in the first place - it may look like the real thing, taste like the real thing, but it's not.
We're broken man, cracked polystyrene man, who just crumble and burn.
And it wears us out...
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics