You Can’t 3-D Print Growth

My husband has a 3-D printer, and I find the whole thing fascinating.

You put in a plan, a sketch, a design, and the printer creates a 3-D version of what you imagined.

Sometimes it takes minutes. Sometimes it takes hours. But either way, it is this incredible process of watching imagination become creation.

And I sometimes wonder what our lives would be like if it worked that way.

What if we could input the vision we have for our lives?

The family we want to build.

The work we want to create.

The health we want to have.

The relationships we want to nurture.

The person we want to become.

And then just press print.

Wouldn’t that be amazing? Maybe.

But I also think we would lose something important.

Because so much of who we become happens in the space between the plan and the outcome.

It happens when things do not go the way we expected.

It happens when we are forced to pause, adjust, rethink, regroup, and try again.

It happens when we are summoned to rise to the occasion and access strengths, courage, wisdom, and resources we did not even know we had.

This is what I often call the 2.0 version of ourselves.

Not the version we planned on becoming. The version we become because life required more of us.

And that process can’t be printed. It can’t be automated. It can’t be reduced to input and output.

So yes, 3-D printers are super cool.

But when it comes to our actual lives, I still believe in the old-fashioned method.

Plan – Execute - Mess up /Succeed – Learn – Adjust if necessary - Begin again.

This is where the growth happens. This is where the strength is built. This is where we become more fully ourselves.

And that, to me, is the highest level of living.