Growing our Lives

Ok, I promise this is the final Parker Palmer-inspired post (for a while), but this guy really has me thinking! Let Your Life Speak is a simultaneously gentle and profoundly challenging read.

There's a short discussion at the end of the book about "making" versus "growing" our lives that I've been mulling over for weeks. My default white western point of view is that we make our lives, as if they are constructions. We build resumes, create opportunities, construct plans. I understand the desire to approach life as controllable ("build"). There is a certain amount of comfort in thinking that if I do the right things, lay the right foundations, and select the right building materials, then my plan will be realized in the end. 

But a built life, a constructed life, is a harsh perspective. And it doesn't reflect the complexities of a life. Our lives, circumstances, and relationships are not predictable, like assembling a Lego structure. We don't make our lives; we grow them.

Growth is a better analogy for a life's journey in so many ways. Growth is a mystery - sure, we can plant a seed and create good conditions for its maturation, but there's nothing we can do to make a seed grow. It simply does. 

Similarly, we cannot control the exact nature of the growth. We can merely respond to it and add the best ingredients we know of to shape and encourage that growth. We can fertilize, prune, and support the growth. But we can't control it. 

I've been thinking about this a lot - what would it look like to cultivate my life? How could growing a life make my perspective on my life more gentle and more aligned with reality? How much more generous would my self-concept be if I saw my life as a precious, delicate seedling to nourish? Would it be easier for me to approach my failures with kind curiosity about how to tend to this unexpected change and how to incorporate it into my overall structure?

I've spent a long time building my life. I am ready for a kinder season of nurture.

What does growing your life mean to you?

Learnings from Hogar de Amor

I spent the last week leading a team of volunteers and loving on the kids and caregivers at Hogar de Amor orphanage in Colima, Mexico. This is the 13th year we have traveled to Hogar de Amor, and I learn something different each year. I also learn many of the same lessons year after year (because I need a lot of repetition!). 

Every year, I am reminded of how sweet it is to take things a little slower and focus more on people and less on doing. This is not my default state or that of my culture; I am generally focused on "doing" and efficiency and accomplishment. Over the past years, my perspective has slowly shifted to taking more delight in slowing down and savoring the relationships. 

As the trip leader, I find this especially difficult, and all the more important. My days can be overwhelmed by the details: schedules, shopping for the next meal, picking up needed supplies, answering questions, and figuring out where we are supposed to be, when, and how to get there. It is tough for me to savor the moment when I feel the week's weight on my shoulders. 

And so it is all the more sweet when I can put all that noise and busyness down for a moment and just be in this place I love so much with people I treasure. My primary job for the week is to handle the details to facilitate those moments of connection for each team member... so my primary work is in the logistics of the future. Yet I also get these beautiful pauses where I sit in the moment's sweetness. I treasure that, and I love that I am getting (slowly, progressively) more practiced at finding and savoring those moments of presence.