Growing-shrinking

Plants and animals, as far as I am aware, all tend to expand as they grow up.
Living things that are shrinking and getting smaller are tending towards death.
Most growing things, including people, require space and light to grow in.

Every stimulus in our life (including life, itself) presents us with a choice about how to respond.

Do we want to react in a habitual way that will bring us closer to death, by shrinking or halting inner movement?
Or, do we want to respond in a more conscious way that would allow for movement and growth aiming into space and light?
Can we see our challenges as "gifts for growth" (as a friend of mine once called them)?
Or, will we allow circumstances and ego to pull us down and trample our spirits, stunting our growth and blocking out light?

All directions exist, and are essential to wholeness.
Up and down, in and out, growing and shrinking.

Perhaps fully accepting the shrinking/freezing response as something natural and inevitable is actually part of the way we allow ourselves to grow.
Maybe finding a dynamic, constantly vibrating balance between shrinking and growing is a middle way which can help us see that life and death are part of one thing, after all.
Maybe the choice is not so much between life and death, up or down, in or out...but between seeing opposing things as separate, or seeing them as one united whole.