GROWTH IS NOT SOMETHING YOU DO.
IT SIMPLY HAPPENS
WHILE YOU SLOWLY, STEADILY
SHED YOUR LEAVES,
WHILE YOU SILENTLY
GIVE AND RECEIVE,
WITHOUT EVER ASKING WHY.
Personal growth is a beautiful thing. There is movement, development, surprise. Unfoldment. But what exactly do we mean when we say we want to grow? No matter how conscious we deem ourselves to be, the kind of growth that is deeply embedded in our minds often still is the exhausting concept of growth that our economic system is based upon:
A kind of growth that may never stop, may never get tired, that's only ever allowed to go one way: forward. To colonize new territory, to achieve, be victorious, to build spaceships, but quickly. A kind of growth that so desperately tries to escape the laws of gravity that it doesn't know about soil anymore, that it doesn't care about the magical way the passing of time and slimy processes of decay make nutrients - enabling the growth of plants in the first place.
When our quest for self-realization turns into a race, a competition, a quest for more and more power, we are trapped in a capitalist hamster wheel, no matter how many crystals we buy to decorate it. 🐹
Looking at the way our ancestors, the trees approach the idea of growth might teach us something. Steady, persistent, interconnected, focused on mutual care, resting in the trust that life will take care of itself (as well as ourselves) if we simply get out of the way with our beautiful plans and ambitions. If we are ready to even fall with the next storm and transform into nutrients for future iterations of Forest.
Realizing in the end that we might be nothing but Forest anyways, the living embodiment of the perpetual growth we were so eagerly striving for. 🌱
