Grow

THINGS caught in the middle of growing aren't ever perfect. They have their extreme faults and weaknesses which are noticeable right away even as these problems are sorted out gradually before one's eyes. But perhaps it is in these tiny faults that we find the kind of perfection we were seeking to discover all along. This perfection isn't the flawlessness of the surface or the achievement of precise ratios; it is a measure of how much beauty we can find in ugly, how much ugly we can find in things people would normally, judgementally assume beautiful after but a moment's careless glance. This kind of beauty is the kind of impermanence of form brought about by permanent changes continuously made to improve and the prove.
Plants can seem to change and grow overnight, sprouting a new creeper or the beginnings of a new leaf, the first signs of an approaching flower bud. Maybe if we bothered to look more carefully these changes wouldn't surprise us as much. But somehow plants manage to surprise me everyday when I look outside my window and wonder how they can hold on strongly, trusting a steadfast earth to stay and nourish them. They surprise me when they do not look as though they are crying even when the great thunderclouds begin rolling in and making a ruckus, squeezing and wringing their joyous rain out to moisten the thirsty ground. They surprise me when trees always seem to hold their branches up into the air like they have always known that they will someday grow tall enough to reach whatever they are trying to reach and in the meantime they must keep their arms outstretched in anticipation of a bright new future.
And children. Children aren't quiet at all. They won't bother to attempt to mask their own faults; they will crave to know their world and gaze up at night onto the universe of stars their parents got painted onto their bedroom ceilings, wondering how come when they try to grab ahold of the stars in the pond out back they just shatter away. Children won't hesitate in silence to laugh or cry or sing or dance because to them the context doesn't mean a thing: situations are for grown-ups to be trapped by, and they will do as they please even if it may seem inappropriate because who else would break the ice?
Perhaps these things gradually begin to sound like mistakes, but even if they are, these little things know in their heart of hearts that they only have to ask to be forgiven, and thanked.
And perhaps this is why we remember our time spent growing and changing the most. We praise it, we reminisce about it, we envy it and we yearn for it. The faults we have in our growing will not remain in the corners of our memories but become but the shadows and echoes of a time long past.
And when I think about these times I wonder if history will repeat itself, again.