by Mike Nickerson, Contributing Author • Ontario, Canada
We can no longer have everything we want, but we can be more than we ever imagined.
Howard Jerome
The desire to grow is firmly rooted in our characters. Throughout our formative years and well beyond growth is a preoccupation. To be able to crawl to reach the water tap or to have our own way all require getting bigger. The residual urge to grow has been harnessed to stimulate the expansion of material consumption. The dilemma is that while each of us wants to grow collectively we have already grown to confront the limits of our planet. The solution has a well established precedent in each of our individual lives. For the most part our physical growth comes to an end as we become adults. Physical growth is replaced by the development of our understanding skills relationships and appreciation of what life offers.
Voluntary simplicity is easier to promote when it is clear that it offers abundant opportunities for growth. Life-based pursuits or the ‘3 L’s’ — Learning Love and Laughter — as they are referred to for our sound bite world offer boundless frontiers. The development of skills scholarship art music sport dance friendship spiritual aspiration parenting and service were the essence of human culture before the commercial era pressed acquisition to its current place of prominence. The saturation of landfill space problems with pollution and painful experiences with finite natural resources bid us re-consider the emphasis we place on the pursuit of our human birthright.
In the same way that a developing embryo goes through the stages of evolution civilization will likely follow the pattern of individual maturation. As a culture we are in late adolescence. We have grown big enough to accomplish anything which life requires of us. Now as self-centeredness gives way to responsibility our rapid physical growth can transmute into the growth of the remarkable qualities which make people unique among life forms.
