Growth

Expanding, peeling back the layers - the white birch

Gillian Cornwall, c. Spring, 2015

Growth: the way we become, the way we change. The distance between our conception and our end point. Growth - we are doing it by the very nature of our being within a system of other beings and influences.

I am not a patient being. I am not patient with myself nor with my fellows on their paths. In the last month, I have thought about this as I believe it is a skill upon which I can work. I have watched the flowers grow on my balcony, somewhat patiently, awaiting the blooms as the goal - the reason I went to the effort of planting them. 

Yesterday, I sat on my deck chair contemplating the portulaca buds in their state just prior to bursting forth into full blossom. The colour was as intense as any precious gem, the shape perfect and compact, like miniature space capsules on the edge of discovery and I realized that they were perfect just then, as stunning as the full blossom and a little further away from the end of their cycle.

I wondered if this were also true of me, as I learned this lesson in, not so much patience rather, being in the moment. There is no better nor worse in the moment. There is simply the moment. There is light and darkness. There is colour and absence of colour. There is joy and sorrow. There is fear and contentment. There cannot be one without the other and this in itself is an equity, a balance. 

If we did not taste that which we dislike, we could not know the joy of the delicious. So I learn to be, more patient - if you wish to call it that, but perhaps I simply grow more willing and open, more fluid in the knowledge that there is a greater balance than that of my mind - my desires and petty complaints. I am part of a greater balance, a greater perfection. 

I am allowed to be, to learn, to grow and to change. I am changing. We are all changing - some quickly, some slowly, some with intent and some simply in the course of nature. I want to be allowed to change and not shoved into some box and labelled. I have never wanted that. Does anyone? 

It is comforting for us to identify, to label, to place and understand things and people, but most of us do not want to have this done to us. We do it out of fear, a need to create order through which we can navigate with a minimal amount of disruption and disaster. The thing is, what we perceive as chaos is simply that which we do not understand and cannot control. It frightens us and drives us into fight or flight mode. 

I am learning that sometimes I can breathe my way through the chaos - leave it be - and move on. I don't need to fix, change, make right nor drive it to order for it simply is part of the all and a necessary part of our journeys. 

Once again, I learn that it is the journey, not the destination. May we all be fully present on our paths, for it is the path on which our lives take place - moment by precious moment. 

-Gillian Cornwall, c. May 29, 2016

The Magnolia - On its way

Gillian Cornwall, c. 2015