When I think about life, I think about growth. Plants keep stretching toward the sun, inch by inch, reaching for the light.

I recall self-help titan Tony Robbins declaring: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

And yet — relentless, unceasing growth has an ugly side. When cells reproduce endlessly, without proportion, we don’t call that vitality. We call it cancer.

This morning, I noticed a plant in my grandmother’s apartment in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland. Green leaves, a plain pot. Nothing remarkable about the species — except that her father planted it more than 70 years ago.

The last time I saw it, it was brushing the ceiling. But today it was shorter. My grandmother told me she had pruned it back, cutting the tall branch after seeing new shoots sprouting near the base.

It reminded me of a targeted ad from Sam Harris — the meditation teacher / digital stoic — which had initially annoyed me. His line was: “The point of life is not to arrive. But to begin again.”

At the time, I rolled my eyes. Algorithmic life advice, packaged for consumption. But standing in that room, looking at that old plant — it felt right. Grow. Then cut. Then begin again.

The rose bush works the same way. To get the fullest, richest blooms, you prune. Too many buds and the bush exhausts itself. With pruning, its energy channels. Its blossoms deepen.

Yesterday, I wrote about grief — how it changes us. The brain itself rewires under the weight of loss. Parts of us die. We are not the same after someone dear is gone, or after years of slow suffering.

The Baháʼí perspective frames it as pruning:

"Men who suffer not, attain no perfection. The plant most pruned by the gardeners is that one which, when the summer comes, will have the most beautiful blossoms and the most abundant fruit. The laborer cuts up the earth with his plough, and from that earth comes the rich and plentiful harvest. The more a man is chastened, the greater is the harvest of spiritual virtues shown forth by him."
— ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks

Yes, it hurts. Parts of us get cut away. Sometimes violently. Sometimes against our will.

But unchecked growth is imbalance.

We can see it in systems, too. Capitalism — for all it has given us — also drives corporations to chase growth at any cost. Tech companies scale feverishly, endlessly. For what? For investors. For the exit. Until growth itself becomes the disease.

Addiction feels similar: an overgrowth of desire. Alcohol, drugs, sex, approval, validation. What begins as a spark spirals into a runaway process, pulling the whole system down.

So maybe Robbins was right. We are either growing or dying. But not in the way he meant.

Growth is necessary. But not every kind of growth. Not in every direction. Not forever.

The plant pulls toward the sun. Maybe our souls pull toward something too. Toward the light of the divine.

But we also need pruning. Not every branch of us can bloom forever.

We must grow.
And we must — again and again — begin.