Most of what grows in us does it without an audience. Ask what grows unwatched, and you may notice how much of your attention goes to the parts that are being measured, and how little to the rest.
What is growing in me that nobody has seen? What do I do differently when no one is looking? Why does something feel smaller once I've explained it? How much of me gets better only when it's left alone?
I know how easy it is to turn something into a project the moment it starts to matter. A small interest, a quiet change of mind, a habit I hadn't named. Then I start checking on it, and it stops being what it was.
Is anything growing in me that I would stop if I knew it counted? And what would I stop if I knew it didn't?
Look at the places that get no attention at all. The corner of the garden, the old friendship, the part of me that has been patient for years. What has been getting along without me?
Growth isn't always upward. Some of it is roots, some is rot that feeds something else, some is a thing taking over a space I thought was empty. What would I call each of those if I weren't allowed to call any of it progress?
The body keeps its own growth, too. A scar closing, a muscle remembering, a jaw that has slowly loosened without my permission. When did that happen, and who was watching?
I wrote about how what we feed shapes the life we end up with, in What are you feeding? (And how it shapes the life only you can live), and about the questions that look useless at first in The Usefulness of Useless.
If this one turned something up and you feel like sharing it, I'd like to hear it. Private, under your name, or anonymous, whichever feels right to you.
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