Growing up

Growing up means growing down, too

Mandy Brown shttps://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/grow-downhares a rich metaphor from James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code:

To be an adult is to be grown-up. Yet this is merely one way of speaking of maturity, and a heroic one at that. For even tomato plants and the tallest trees send down roots as they rise toward the light. (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code)

Brown elaborates:

That is, we grow not only up—not only skyward—but down, into the roots, back to that from which we came and to which we will, one day, return. We become, in time, more rooted and resilient, more capable of surviving the storm, less easily shaken away from ourselves by idle wind or rain. When I think about growing down instead of up, I think about becoming centered, about knowing what work is ours to do (and, critically, what work is not), about a slow, steady power rather than a rash and inconstant one. After all, as anyone who’s ever lived among city trees can tell you, neither brick nor concrete nor iron can stop a root as it seeks out water. We should be as steady in our search for that which nurtures our own lives.

For me, growing up has been accompanied by feeling increasingly unmoored, of learning that comforting truths I was told are in fact myths, of learning that my parents could not in fact protect me from everything, and of constantly revising my understanding of the world to accommodate a steady stream of contradictions. Perhaps what no one told me of is the need to become more rooted as we grow—in our place, our community, our values—in order, like trees, to withstand the gathering gales.

The price of growth is pain

the price of all growth is pain, but the pain passes and the growth remains. (Maria Popova)