Growth is part of the three legs that undergirds our uncharted journeys of life’s transitions.  (The other two are letting go and loss.)

James Hollis in Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life says that “it is far easier to walk in shoes too small for us than to step into the largeness that the soul expects and demands. Can we really bear to know who we are, with all those contradictions, all those other energies and agendas that do not conform to our ego ideal of ourselves?”

Growth can be scary. It can call us into new places that we’ve never imagined or it can push us to reclaim healthy parts of ourselves that we have allowed to diminish. Growth can be the most holy activity we can imagine for ourselves or it can feel like hell for a while. Growth can hurt and it can heal. It can energize us and it can exhaust us. But when we finally get there… to the next goal…the next step of our journey…my oh my. We can wonder why we thought that growth was such a bad thing and so scary?

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”