growth
We think of our lives as linear. Straight lines persisting from start to finish. We watch the days, weeks, months, and years move sequentially with a determined onward-ness. And we think that progress and development should happen with the same kind of lockstep linearity. We should be further along this year than the years previous. With every new passage of time we think we should be doing, accomplishing, gaining, garnering, and becoming more than we ever have been.
Life isn’t a highway despite what Tom Cochrane says. It isn’t straightforward or clearly demarcated. “Life meanders like a path through the woods”, says Katherine May. It loops and twists and stalls and doubles back again. It isn’t something direct and unswerving, but something seasonal, and cyclical, and rhythmic. It’s a space where falling and flourishing aren’t antagonistic. They form a partnership.
There are times when we are green and capable. When we are full and expansive. When we are rife with our own blossoming. And there are seasons when our ground is fallow. When we are stripped down to our essentialness and we are left with no choice but to become dormant. And this is what growth is.
Growing does not mean constant accumulation. It is not a steady harvest. Sometimes it looks like what loss is. Sometimes it’s quiet and barren and leafless. Sometimes it asks us to rest with patience. Sometimes it’s a seed planted and waiting in the darkness.
May you trust the seasons that strip you down to almost nothing.
May you recognize that dormancy is not what defeat is.
May you always the will to walk a path that is winding and uncertain, this is where growth lives.
In case no one told you today, I love you with all my everything.
I think we are in one of these times in our human history where we are asked to be open and flexible. Linear time doesn’t work anymore. Our adaptability as well as our grounding skills will be essential.
I love these black and white and neutrals with little hints of orange! 🧡
Forte! 👏✂️