You Need to Flail

Learning how to live human lives from plants

First published on Medium in 2016

Contrary to the video title, this is isn’t a vine but rather a bine.

Very similar, but a bine does this flailing motion until eventually it finds something in the world (usually another tree or vertical post) and then spirals up that as a way of securing growth around stability.

It’s all one mechanism too — the plant isn’t really ‘deciding’ to wrap around stuff, the very same sugars that make the helicopter motion make the spiral.

So here’s the metaphor: the plant doesn’t know what is up. It has no goals. But it will try things and it will flail around and around until it connects with something, and then it can move further up that thing, and that thing provides stability and support where there wasn’t before.

Sound familiar?

Out of high school I saw a lot of friends worry about this, and I was sometimes in the same boat though my secondary school plans were already set.

Then, when we graduated secondary it happened again.

When we’re young, when we’re confused and thrust out into the world it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed and like we don’t know what we’re doing or even what we want out of life.

It’s scary to know how unstable we are. We’re just this plant stalk and even with roots, we’re still cantilevered out into the open air. Naturally, we yearn for stability. Naturally we look to find those support poles and the harder we force them, the more frustrating it is when we either can’t find them, or find the wrong ones and they collapse.

I tried to make sense of it rationally — take personality tests, find the things that are pragmatically aligned to who I am and the skills I have. If you know me, this sort of planning is exactly my personality. The antithesis of fear is knowledge, right? So we can learn our way out of this slump.

That didn’t work. At least not for me.

What did work was just running out and trying stuff with reckless abandon.

And the more you try stuff, the more you flail around in life, the more likely you’ll be to hit across something that you genuinely like and enjoy, and spoiler alert: that thing is probably something you’ve a) never even heard of or b) maybe have heard of but never thought you’d like.

So just trying those things is the only way to decide. If you simply look at them and think “that’s not for me” you’ll never know / miss out.

You have to helicopter to seek out the poles.

Plants don’t have eyes. They can’t see the supports and aim for them. Neither do we, not in that metaphorical sense.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where –” “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

-Alice in Wonderland

If you don’t know what you want, just start doing anything. Eventually you’ll find that pole that connects you and you can twirl around it.

And, relax. The helicopter process is scary for everyone and seeing other people hit their poles early or late is needless judgement. Flail around, find your thing(s) at the pace you need. It’s fine.

After that? Climb the pole as long as you want, but never be afraid to keep flailing. Sometimes poles run out, you hit the top and there’s nothing more to twirl around. Helicopter again. Find a new one, a different one. This might be a career change or a failed marriage. Maybe your hobby got boring; whatever. It’s not a problem.

Go. Flail.