Not originally a musing, but got that way as I wrote.
Whether you pronounce it twenty-ten or two-thousand-ten, it's here. And with it, something else, at least to my mind.
There are important years in our life. As an American, at least, I've gotta say ten, thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one. As myself, I'll say five, six, twelve, and sixteen. That last one is coming up.
How many of you just did the math in your head there? Yeah. I've been writing the year as dd/mm/0y since I was six. It's...almost jarring to realize how much I've grown in that time, and how long it's been since 199x. I have grown from incapable of always keeping my letters straight to--well, I won't say my writing style is amazing, but the technique is there. And I've started to make it my own. I've figured out my main interests, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to get as a job. At six...I wasn't even sure who I was, in any way. Now, I may not know everything about myself, but I know that I want to sing. It hasn't come across on this blog very strongly, but music is my life. Singing, listening, playing...it's such a huge part of me, it's odd to look back at my self when I was so young I didn't know that. Even if I somehow was unable to get a job in music, I would sing.
I don't know if anyone reading this who doesn't know me will understand that. But now I feel like music is something that's written on my soul. And I didn't even think of it then.
I'm sixteen in a few months. I'm learning how to drive, which is an entirely new experience in and of itself. I have never had a form of movement that wasn't intuitive. Scooters? Turn the top thing the way you want to turn, push forward with your foot to move. Skateboards, pretty close, but it's weight distribution to turn. Bikes? Pedal and turn, clutch the brake to brake. But in a car, you've got all this stuff between you and the wheels, and you've got the gearshift, and then there's the fact that you can't see where the car is just by turning around, you have to memorize it by...well, hitting stuff. One hopes they're 2-liter soda bottles.
So, I guess the point is...I didn't realize I was growing up. It was there at the back of my mind, but I didn't feel it. I'm sixteen soon, and I remember not turning fifteen too long ago. I remember being, learning, teaching, seeing, knowing, changing, but not growing. I don't think I really have ever noticed that. I know what all of the others are, and how you do them. But what is growing? It's just something that happens. If I were in a cave and living, I'd be growing. I'm here in my nice, warm house and I'm growing. Growing is what you do when you're living.
...Huh. I guess that's it. Growing is everything you do when you're living. Growing is the adjustments to your environment, large or small, that allow you to keep moving. And whether those adjustments are to yourself pushing inward or other things pushing outward doesn't matter. Because changing others changes you. It might lead to introspection or direct action, but it changes you.
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"Growing is everything you do when you're living." -- I like it.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that if you're not growing, you're not living. But I had not thought about it the other way around. By simply living, you are growing. It may not be the direction you want to grow; you may have more or less control of it, but you do grow as long as you're alive.
Plants grow as long as they're alive, and most of them are required to bloom (or not) where they are planted. The environment shapes them, and they shape the environment (think of tree roots heaving up the sidewalk, or plants stopping erosion, or the smell of citrus blossoms in the air).
But people ... people have some say over their environment, physical and mental. They can move from the mountains to the beach; they can fill their minds with different concepts from the ones they originally learned; they can change their perspective.
Interesting musings ....