Our baby girl is not yet eating much solid food, she’s just not that interested! Perhaps it’s because her first food was Pawpaw, and nothing else compares! We’ve tried sweet potatoes, beans, and squash to no avail. Yet she will happily munch on leaves she finds on the lawn. One day last week, I was not prepared with her usual baby food concoctions, and give her some overcooked broccoli florets from my plate instead. She ate them without her usual furrowed brow! She clearly wants to skip ahead to finger foods, so we shall!
Somehow it happens that one day the baby is eating ‘real food’ and sitting up, and playing with her older brothers. Our little girl is 7 months old today, and is quickly coming into her own. It is both beautiful and creates an uneasy sense of loss. As a mother, I am stricken by how quickly time passes when I look into the adoring eyes of my baby girl.
While writing this, I am reassured of how human change can creep up on us. Perhaps this will be the case with myself; that one day I won’t have to labour so much over decisions, because I will have changed, gained confidence in myself and grown up. That having been said, I feel like I am still a child in so many ways, with so much to learn. I think the process of growing up only ends when we take our last breath. There are always new ways to grow, and if I mistakenly trick myself into thinking otherwise, my life would not be the same. I pursue growth and change. These are the only constant things in life. I have come to a place in my life where I’m at peace with change, no longer having to remind myself that it is responding to change that sustains natural systems. I want to always stay in a constant state of change, as this is how nature itself survives. Change means life. I want to live.
As a culture, we need to find a way to embrace change as a form of adaptation. We are lon the cusp of needing adaptive skills to survive as a species. I’ll continue to dream about the prospects of human growth, hoping that perhaps change within our culture in general will one day surprise me. Maybe I’ll spontaneously notice the masses adopting permaculture ethics, and wonder how it is that we’ve grown so much, so quickly. It can happen, right?
Very well put! Our ability adapt and change our behaviour to suit different situations and environments is the very trait that has allowed us to become such a populous and influential species in the global ecosystem. If we were to settle in too comfortably on a single idea and lose sight of the big picture, how can we ever begin to think that we could have a successful future if everything else is continuing to evolve without us?
I completely agree! We are caught in a place now where we (as a species) are so removed from nature that we don’t realize just how much we BELONG. Humans often overlook the ‘give and take’ that nature needs to sustain itself, thinking somehow that we are above it. It is our very nature of change and adaptation that will see us through this, lest we forget to use and value nature’s gifts!