What if growth isn’t the thing that takes effort?
A thought about trees made me smile today. I’d been talking with someone about growth while a storm was wailing outside. I glanced out of the window and could see the branches of the big sycamore in my garden whipped about by the wind. In that moment, I could vividly picture the small leaf buds on those branches, and I imagined each bud working hard to hold in their leaves against the wind and winter cold. I could feel the potential energy, the growth stored in those buds, and this feeling, like an anticipation of a long-awaited exhale, or stretching out cramped legs after being all scrunched up for too long, when the conditions are finally right for the leaves to begin: “aaah, it’s finally warm enough to let my leaves out!”
People often talk about growth and change requiring effort. When folks get stuck or aren’t making obvious movements towards growth, people, society, often tells them to put in more effort, work harder, change who they are. Often we might tell ourselves that we’re not doing enough, that we’re bad and wrong, not trying hard enough to grow or change.
I’m not sure this is the way it has to be.
Over the past few years I’ve gone through huge amounts of growth and change, and I’ve been lucky to see massive growth and change in others. What feels like a really important similarity in a lot of this transformation is that when the conditions are right, it happens irrepressibly, unstoppably, like leaves bursting out of the buds in spring. That’s not to say that no effort was expended in the process, but I think a lot of the effort goes into protecting the parts of us that want to grow, before the growth actually happens, holding in those new leaves until it feels safe enough, finding good enough conditions. I think a lot of us feel deep down how vulnerable young leaves, new growth, can be. It makes sense that we’d want to make sure the conditions are okay.
I have spent a lot of my life not feeling safe enough to grow, in a lot of different ways. It can be exhausting holding in all that growth that desperately wants to happen, so I think I’ve also always been looking for the right conditions, or good enough conditions, usually without being sure what they might actually be. I think that’s probably true for most of us. We feel that powerful drive for growth, and if the conditions don’t feel right, we keep looking out for when they might be. Maybe even when it feels almost completely hopeless, a tiny part continues scanning for something that feels hopeful.
In each moment of safe-enough, however small, a leaf emerges, and I get to breathe out a bit more. The more I can find, and feel — whether that’s in my environment, my connection with nature, my sense of myself, others’ love and care towards me, the more I’m able to grow. And then sometimes conditions get rough again and I protect myself, some of the buds stay closed a little longer.
I’m also not talking about safety as an absolute here — I’m not saying that people only grow when they are ‘safe’. It’s like… the drive to grow is so strong, that as soon as there is anything like slightly better conditions — a little more nutrition in the soil, a little less wind, a little more sunlight, something can start to grow into that space and food and light. Life seems to be good at that, and maybe our internal processes have a lot more in common with the moss on walls, with pavement plants and trees, than might seem immediately obvious.
I also think that sometimes we can get so used to having to protect our tender young leaves that even when the conditions are good, we can’t quite trust it. Sometimes I can feel the strain of the conflict between my tender leaves sensing the light and warmth outside, and the scared, distrustful parts of me holding them back. “Not yet, please don’t grow, it’s not safe!” Sometimes the leaves happen anyway and it can be terrifying feeling so vulnerable. Sometimes holding back takes so much effort I get angry and sad, and look for reasons why it’s not safe enough, or try to prove that it is.
I like this leaf imagery because I like metaphors that I can turn around in my head, see new angles, and feel things out, and I like analogies that take me outside. As far as I know, trees don’t get frustrated at themselves for their lack of growth in winter, and when the spring comes, their leaves, shoots, and branches grow exactly into the shapes they need to, with the food, light, warmth, and mycelial and biodiverse networks they have around them. When I imagine growth being like an exhale, a release of tension, I feel like I could maybe trust a bit more the shapes that I might grow into, the space I might take up. I can feel the effort it takes to protect myself, and how much I’ve needed to, and also how much it can hurt to hold back the very core of myself. But also, what if the conditions are better now? I’m excited to see my leaves and branches grow into the shapes they need to.
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