Maybe I had miscalculated what was left of my life. Maybe it wasn’t loose change. Or, actually, the whole thing was loose change, from start to finish—many, many little moments, each holiday, each Valentine, each year unbearably repetitive and yet somehow always new. You could never buy anything with it, you could never cash it in for something more valuable or more whole. It was just all these days, held together only by the fragile memory of one person—or, if you were lucky, two. And because of this, this lack of inherent meaning or value, it was stunning. Like the most intricate, radical piece of art, the kind of art I was always trying to make. It dared to mean nothing and so demanded everything of you.

I knew that in the end of the movie he would realize he was selling trees not because he thought it would help anything—he actually felt it was much too late for that—but because he loved this place, Earth. It was an act of devotion. A little like writing or loving someone—it doesn’t always feel worthwhile, but not giving up somehow creates unexpected meaning over time.