I read about this wooden cooking spoon, lauded for its ability to scrape along the contours of any vessel. Such is the nature of wood, the surprising amount of pliability despite its sturdiness.
I think about the floors I dance on, how they're all wood. It wasn't always that way - at the community college where I went for cooking, I took a dance class and in order to practice for performances in our spare time, we'd resorted to the hallway floors of concrete. After doing routines involving leaps for a few weeks, my knees were shot.
Concrete isn't wood. It doesn't give, so it's completely up to other materials (i.e. my knees) to absorb any impact.
The reason why wood can be the way it is - well, it's alive, you see. Even after being cut down, it's still a living thing, capable of adaptation, forming dynamic relationships with what it comes in contact with. Concrete is just dead. So you see, being alive matters.