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GROW SMALL
What goes up, must come down. Gravity teaches this. So does life. Yet paradoxically, we often forget on the way up that there is a downturn to just about everything, including good fortune. Growing up, for example, also implies growing old. Happy retirement is a stage closer to the endgame. Birth includes mortal limitations in the package. We don't gift Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's On Death and Dying for newborns for obvious reasons. But to dismiss the reality that diminishment is on the horizon is to play games with the truth.
We're not socialized to diminish in the same way that we are to rise. We're trained in competition early: for parental attention and sometimes affection, for grades in school and prizes in sports. More subtly, we learn from experience that we'll be silently evaluated by our appearance, personality, cleverness, clothes, or social group. Some of these things can be acquired. Others may be beyond us. Still, the rewards of being on top motivate us to climb as far as we can.
Most religious systems promote the seemingly contrary value of humility, which embraces lowliness as a spiritually more accurate condition. It can seem out of place to cultivate humility while endeavoring to expand our resumes and grow our portfolios. Yet John the Baptist grasped it at the height of his influence: "He must increase; I must decrease." (John 3:30) Down is the new up, in the kingdom where the last are first.
—Alice Camille
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