We are limit phobic in the extreme... we are growth addicted... we are competence addicted... the intolerance that's in there would appear to be life affirming only if you understand life as being the stage wherein all your genius gets to come out to play. But you know and I know that's not what life is - a staging area for your genius... Do be deeply intolerant of limits essentially dooms you to a project of unrestrained, unfettered and untethered growth... A tumor is best understood as growth for its own sake. A tumor is unrestrainedly leaning forward. That's what it does. It simply continues and it increases... The tumor's job is to continue regardless of the consequence to its host. Sound familiar? It's disastrously familiar. So apparently Mars is plan B now. And you know, it's interesting that all the dot com money is going towards ending disease, ending death, and getting to Mars. It's quite astounding that that's where this new money is going. And all these guys--these millionaires sound philanthropic, a word that means 'human loving' -- well maybe 'human centered' is a better rendering of those projects. I mean, if we're not supposed to die, what the hell are we supposed to be doing? Is our death really an insult that enough dot com money can finally put us on the right side of? How is that not the mania for growth iterated in and of a direction? And of course the consequence of tumors is: by virtue of it growing, untethered to the consequence of its growth, it literally kills what sustains it. That's its job description - to kill what sustains it... but at least to grow. And then you think of that language in terms of the personal growth industry by which North America is so easily recognizable to the rest of the world. And you realize, 'My God it's the same language again! And it is! And it's the same mania again! And it's the same intolerance again. And it's the same blindness and the deep unwillingness to be a human being and to be reigned in by grief... not to be restrained but to be bound to what sustains you. That's not defeat unless your project is to be unrestrained - then it is. But if your project is to live a mutually nourishing life then to be restrained in that regard is to be disciplined so that your capacities serve something, and in so doing you recognize how much on the receiving end of being served you have been... which is of course what our childhood is for. And the ending of our childhood is often accomplished by recognizing how deeply 'on the take' we have been without ever recognizing it. And sometimes you get to live long enough where you can turn to your parent and you can say, 'I'm sorry I had no idea for the longest time.'
Stephen Jenkinson