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?