From the moment we’re conceived, growth and development never cease. We’ve come to expect that the transitions from infant to toddler, tween to adolescent, and so on, throughout the growth cycle, will present certain stereotypical challenges and behavioral changes. But we assume that the psycho-social growth of older folks stops with their physical growth. Au contraire, mon ami.
Lest you think your particular age-stage is more difficult than your neighbor who’s in a younger or older stage, every life-stage has its growing pains. Even a “good” transition to something new, different, or changed can be stressful. Sudden wealth syndrome – “what a shame,” we might think. Adapting to success, what?
Older people continue to grow and develop as well as their younger counterparts. The literature on psycho-social changes in older adulthood is fraught with a number of telling descriptive alliterations which include: adapt, adjust, accommodate, and attitude.
I believe it’s an old military slogan to “adapt and overcome.” So, maybe it’s truly a battle to grow older.
“Youngsters” in their twenties and thirties have joked for years about “adulting” being a strange new world that they’re not all that elated about entering. Was it Pat Benatar who sang, “love is a battlefield?” Well so is developmental change.
By the time we reach middle-old at around sixty-five, we’ve become more resistant to change than ever before. Thus, the stereotypical phrase, “stuck in our ways.”
The tasks set before us from middle-old to old-old, directly challenge our uncompromising existence. It’s not unheard of for someone in their “terrible-eighty-twos” to stomp their feet and exclaim, “I’ve always done it this way, and I’m not about to change now.” Or, when told that we have to accept assistance, we might be heard to resist with, “I’ll figure it out myself.”
Sometimes I think I’m growing more complex over time and with effort. Other times I just think I’m growing like a weed. Weeds aren’t much liked by most people. In fact, the modifier, noxious – often accompanies any mention of weeds.
I’ve grown quite fond of many weeds. Dandelions are beautiful if you look closely at their blooms, with an open mind. Their greens are bitter but edible if prepared artfully by trendy culinary newbies or their country cousins who’ve been eating them with bacon dressing, forever.
Thistle blooms are untouchably delightful to behold. Bamboo is a wonder, and the speed to which it towers and spreads mimics its grass cousins. Its uses are manifold, but like Purple Loose strife, bamboo is considered by plant experts to be a noxious or nuisance weed.
I think the most prevalent explanation for human hatred of weeds is our perfectionistic, obsessive, or controlling need to dominate, subdue, civilize, or wipe them out. Few of us can co-exist with weeds and just appreciate them, and those who do are frequently, if not openly, ridiculed for being lazy, untidy, or slovenly about their landscape.
Weeds grow rampantly. The whole weed-thing, as a metaphor, fits many of us in the middle-old stage of growth. Some of our thoughts are contrary – just like weeds, to the acceptable fundamentalist rural culture that many of us live in.
Fundamentalism would have us believe that personal growth means you’ve grown higher, better and above other folks. A more gracious perspective of growth is that it is circular rather than vertical or hierarchical.
It’s likely that a fully-grown adult will be a person of a certain age, with perhaps a relatively vast base of lived-experience. From this point of view, a “grown-up” has developed in terms of depth rather than stature.
Because I’ve grown up or might even be considered mature, doesn’t mean I’m better than you if you haven’t grown so much. In fact, it’s possible that my growth means I’ve experienced a much larger share of adversity, and opposition than you have and been humbled into an unassuming, content, weed-patch.
Then again, some of us grew through adversity into loud, obnoxious victims of circumstance. Maybe it’s time to judiciously pull some weeds?
Oh, my goodness, have you observed many grown-up politicians in America lately? Apropos for these times in politics is the prophetic Scripture, Isaiah 3:4 which says in various translations: “I will make youths to be their leaders, and babes shall govern them.”
I wonder if their power cancels their growth, as we’ve ended up with metaphorical babies leading us. It seems that many of those baby-rulers haven’t grown nor stretched when they encountered opposition, challenge, resistance or trouble, but morphed into victims.
The developmental fight of the mature among us, is in the seeking not the finding. Growth achieved through inner wanderings is manifest in a personal style of open-ended seeking to “be all you can be,” another classic military slogan.
Discovery is fuel for the journey, not the final destination. This makes my spirit leap within me like that of a fully-grown adult soldier, flowering like a weed.