Photo by Jeff Cooper on Unsplash
Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!
You are an ecosystem.
You are not required to constantly grow.
Capitalism teaches us that the right way, the only way, is for things to consistently and constantly grow. Our economy must grow in order to be healthy. This need to always grow means there is only scarcity or abundance. In our current economic model, there is no such thing as enough.
This isn't natures way.
In nature there are seasons. One time of the year is for growing; another is for culling. And even in spring time somethings are dying. Something is being culled. In nature one tree is growing while another tree is dying.
Even after some devastation like the current California forest fires, the mycelium are working their magic beneath the soil and the bugs and grubs come to feast.
In nature everything is growing and everything is dying and all of it is happening all at once.
In coaching culture, and in self help culture, we prioritize constant personal growth. But this isn't healthy. This is an effect of living in capitalist culture. As in nature, it is vastly important, vital even, for us to take breaks. To allow for fallow periods. To not need to constantly grow.
And to allow for the complexity of being human, being a living breathing ecosystem in which one thing is going great and growing and another isn't doing so well.
To wit: This year my five year relationship went up in flames. I've felt creatively blocked in most every endeavor. I overdrew my bank account a half dozen times. I'm currently crashing with friends and I don't own a stick of furniture.
But/and/simultaneously:
My coaching business is doing better than ever. I'm healing my relationship with myself in ways I didn't think were possible. I'm about to travel to India for six weeks for no reasons except my own pleasure and edification.
It's a pernicious myth that we can grow constantly.
I am an ecosystem. And you are too.
Parts of my life are alive and thriving. Parts of my life are shriveling up and dying. And it's all happening at the same time.
Just like nature (and Arcade Fire), its everything, now.
Much love,
Bear
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