Ultimate Playtime

GROWTH

It is still early in the year when all things green (and not so green) are growing.

I sat pondering this fact after I had been out walking the Benchland Trail here in Canmore (Alberta), just after a massive spring snowfall.

It struck me how incredibly hardy the delicate-looking spring flowers are.

We had a lot of snow during twelve days in May, at a time when here in the Rockies the flowers are at a vulnerable part in their growth. I often wondered how they fared when weather became so brutal, so I took a walk to see the outcome. Flowers like the Prairie Crocus and the Calypso Orchid had been buried under the snow, but were still thriving afterward. I guess when you are at a stage in your level of growth where it must continue, it just continues.

This thought struck me like a bolt of lightning. If you are meant to grow at a certain stage, then no matter what happens externally, your little mechanism that says "grow" kicks in. Regardless of the difficulty, the circumstances, the inconvenience, and/or any other potential negatives; growth happens.

Well of course the parallels began to form in my mind, and I thought perhaps there just might be something more than the purely physical aspect of this. When programs within our blueprint are set off at a specific time, they just happen as a part of our genetic make-up. Everything, from a baby taking their first steps, through the painful changes of adolescence, into middle age and beyond; is all part of who we are and it just simply happens. Of course what makes us unique in our growth is the emotional aspect along with the physical changes involved in the process.

A flower does not doubt whether it should grow or not, or if it will even be capable. The human condition also does not tend to question whether we are ready for this adolescence (or what ever stage we are at) or not, it simply happens. But I think we do question it at some point in our lives; or perhaps rather than questioning, perhaps we may fear a stage of our growth.

Because of our uniqueness we can't always predict in which way we will grow, since there are so many different factors other than hormones which promote a particular stage of development. We don't just experience physical change, but in each stage we mature in different ways; whether it is emotionally, mentally or spiritually. We experience these areas of growth in ways meaningful to us either through pain or pleasure.

The death of a loved one or the birth of a new baby creates change in our lives. And whether welcome or not, the event will change the course of life to something completely different than what it was, before the experience.

When I come back to those delicate flowers, it made me laugh and think of a particular saying, because I accidentally (?) twisted it around to say "Grow with the flow." Of course these are just pondering thoughts of a person who had come through the winter with a mind bent on spring. But it makes you think…

By Brenda Holder