Why does growing hurt? An homage to two Karins and an Edna

Yesterday I rediscovered a poem I have always loved.  More than loved, it is an old friend that has seen me through some challenging times, like the birth of my first child at home in London in 1992.  I remember reading the poem then, when I was in the early stages of labor and scared to death, not at all sure I could do this thing called giving birth.  A few hours later, there was Ella, a beautiful baby girl, a new life.  But yes, it hurts to grow.  They used to talk about teenagers having growing pains.  Now they have cell phones to numb the pain, but growing still hurts.  It's hard for an adult to learn a new language, move to another town, or even start a new job.  Yes, growing hurts.  But why? and should we ignore the pain and grow anyway?

I was first introduced to the poem by my Swedish Literature professor at U.C.L., the wonderful and inspiring Dr. Karin Petherick.  Karin was unlike any other teacher at the university.  She truly cared about each and every student and made sure we all knew about it.  In the days before student-centered education, before learning styles had been discovered or written and lectured about, before student learning outcomes existed, when exams were just exams and teachers were just teachers, when professors at universities thought their raison d'etre was their research and students were so many little maggots crawling around waiting to be swiped away with the stroke of a red pen.  In those days there was a university professor called Karin Petherick, who was not only a brilliant scholar and excellent teacher, but also a caring human being.

For our 8 a.m. Swedish Literature class Karin would make a huge orange thermos full of black coffee in our classroom on the 4th floor of the Georgian house on Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, that contained the Department of Scandinavian Studies.  She also brought little yellow plastic mugs and a glass jar of fresh milk, and sugar in a plastic bag.  Sometimes there were biscuits too.  Even though I didn't really like coffee I drank it gratefully. I feel as if the hot and bitter liquid I poured into my body blended perfectly with the passages by Bergman, Söderberg, Strindberg and other greats from the canon of Swedish Literature as we read them aloud and discussed them together.

One day Karin introduced us to some poetry by Karin Boye, whose novel of a dystopian future totalitarian state, "Kallocain" we also read.  I think it may be time to re-read that one, I don't remember it having a big impact on me in 1983, but it may be a novel whose time has come.

It was the poem, from Boye's collection entitled "För trädets skull," "For the sake of the tree," that was to have a lasting effect on me.  It seems to express the pain of growing that I believe everyone and everything in the world feels, more or less consciously.  As an undergraduate student in London I had my challenges to deal with, growth was demanded of me.  As it is now.  When we stop growing life in any meaningful sense is over.  Perhaps a definition of depression could be the cessation of growth, and of anxiety, the fear of growth.

The poem is called "Ja visst gör det ont," "Yes of course it hurts."  You can read the original text at www.karinboye.se where there are also two English translations.  Neither one captures the true essence of the poem as it comes across in the Swedish language for me, so I have made some adaptations of my own here.

"Yes of course it hurts"

Of course it hurts when buds burst.
Why else would Spring hesitate?
Why would all our hot longing
be bound in the frozen, pale bitterness?
The bud has been tightly wrapped the whole winter.
What's this new sensation of tearing and breaking?
Yes of course it hurts when buds burst,
Pain for that which begins
                                         and for that which is closing.

Yes it's hard when drops fall.
Trembling with anxiety they hang heavily,
Clinging to the twig, swelling, sliding –
gravity pulls them downwards, yet still they cling.
Hard to be uncertain, scared and divided,
difficult feeling the pull and call of the deep,
yet still sitting there just trembling –
difficult wanting to stay
                               and wanting to fall.

Then, when it's at its worst and nothing helps,
The tree's buds burst in jubilation.
Then, when no fear can hold on anymore,
the twig's drops fall in a glittering cascade
forgetting that they feared the new
forgetting their anxiety ahead of the journey –
for one second they feel their greatest security,
rests in the trust
                                       that creates the world.

                                             – by Karin Boye, translation by Helen Tye Talkin

I don't know why growing hurts.  Edna O'Brien, is another of my favorite authors, this time Irish, which makes sense since my paternal grandmother Emily was East-End London Irish.  O'Brien wrote: "fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment."  If we don't live in the moment, at least to some extent, fear will prevent us from doing anything at all other than those things we have been conditioned like Pavlov's dog to do from a very early age, things like glaring at women who sit and eat lunch alone in a restaurant, or whatever.  Although I am only a fraction Irish, perhaps a quarter, I am quite proud of that heritage and it is very strong.  Again in the words of Edna O'Brien:

"Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds with other nationalities, having quite different philosophy, about pleasure and about punishment, about life and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous."