May is a beautiful month of growth.
There are beech trees near where I live and they start the month as dry branches with brown, crepey, curled-up leaves. They end the month with soft, unfurled, green leaves, that are so lush and abundant, the branches are hidden.
Nature doesn’t resist change, but sometimes we do.
I know some students who are finishing college and others who are finishing secondary school this month. Some are excited for the next chapter, some are nervous and would like to stay put. Endings are difficult as we don’t always want to let go of where we are.
As we get older, people find aging difficult, looking back wistfully at the vibrancy of their youth.
But every stage has something new for us and we would become stale if we never changed and moved forward. Read on for more on this topic…
Have a good month!
Sinead
I recently finished Dr. Maureen Gaffney’s book, “Your One Wild and Precious Life: An inspiring guide to becoming your best self at any age.” Each chapter describes a different stage of life, going from infancy to old age.
Some friends advised me to dive in and start reading from the stage that I was at myself but I read the whole book, cover to cover. I found it easy to read and it left me feeling uplifted about growing older. Every stage in life has its own purpose and we are always learning and developing. As Maureen outlines, we have 3 main drivers; 1. closeness, 2. competence and 3. autonomy and the importance of each one varies over our life stages.
I enjoyed the optimism in the book which showed it is possible to liberate yourself from past beliefs or limiting messages that you tell yourself and embrace every new day, regardless of your age.
In psychologist Maureen’s own words “At any stage, you are never fully formed. The story is never over. The story is always of a life in progress.”
If we are always holding onto the past, we don’t make space for the future.
A couple of months ago, I met a lady who had just published her first book of poetry. She had let go of previous beliefs about her writing and took a risk. Here’s one of her poems about a beech tree that let go of its past to become something new!
Dreamboat by Mary P. O’Sullivan
Miles away from the sea, it grew,
The beech tree in Greenhill.
From seed to sapling
Loving the sun
Loving the rain
Longing and reaching for the light.
Bowing and bending
Curving it’s lovely limbs
While a crookedness took hold.
Down to it’s very roots
where it’s dreams were audible
To nodding neighbours
For they were kind.
A dream, impossible dream maybe,
To maybe, just once,
Be launched, set free
Transformed into a different beauty.
So long years it waited
Until the appointed day
When a master carpenter stopped by
And two dreams fused
Still held within the heart
His artist’s eye recognised
Within the imagined flaw
The curving lines of his dreamboat
The perfect prow, the sturdy hull
A vision of genius and beauty
Launched upon the waves
Carrying it’s cargo of life’s memories
And proud achievements.
It’s precious store of stories
Of faith and love and trust
Of those who bravely took the boats
The ships to sail far away
In search of a new life
Silently holding the broken hearts
Of those still standing on the shore
Waving their tear drenched handkerchiefs,
Praying, believing in their safe homecoming
Once again reunited in laughing joy.
“This realization that neither time nor choices are limitless is both daunting and exciting. This is the moment to take stock and figure out how to make the best of every precious moment of the rest of your life.” Maureen Gaffney
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” John Maynard Keynes
“The Trees” Philip Larkin (if you would like another poem related to this month’s theme)
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Sinead Huskisson 