We often think of the soft part of the plant as life filled and beautiful. The sprouting seed, the budding stem, the blossoms smooth and vibrant.

We value youth and the parts of a system that are taking up the energy and getting all the attention.

Kids and young adults think they hold centre stage. And rightly so! Exposed as they are, unprotected from the lessons learned. At the helm of self creation.

Oh but to be lignified! To be hardened in your very cells. To be the strength that lends itself to new growth and deeper roots. To have the capacity to be the big sister, the parent, the grand and humble grandparent.

I came across the term lignified as both a desired and needed quality for fig tree propagation. When pruning, keep the branches that have lignified, pop them - two nodes deep - into the ground, an voila, you have a new fig tree!

“Cell wall lignification is a complex process occurring exclusively in higher plants; its main function is to strengthen the plant vascular body.”

This hardening is a desired trait and I want to tell you more about it.

People… you see.

People can be difficult to navigate. Especially when we love and care about them and want them to be our friend, sibling, mother, child. When we want them close and trusting and having fun, sharing the days of this life with us.

Well, the joy of having and being a lignified friend is a true one.

I have a memory from my 20’s. Out on a grassy hilltop, overlooking the splendour of Terra Bulga national park. My friend and I sat next to each other, looking up at the moon in the day sky. We were friends for sure. Our kids went to the same school and we’d hanging out when we could, and still getting to know each other. On this weekend we deserted the city to camp out in nature. This outing itself was a ‘lignification'‘ of the friendship.

But at this moment, both of us sitting with knees hugged into our chests, I felt a need to let go and I lay my head on her shoulder. Just lent clean across and gave up all my holding with no idea as to how she would react.

I could have gone for years with that underlying ‘walking on egg shells’ feeling around her. The kind that is unnoticed and arrises from not knowing where she stood on this or that aspect of life. But as my head found her shoulder I felt she was as strong as a rock. A bolder deeply embedded in the earth. Unmoved. Her gaze steady in the distance.

All my insecurities, self doubts, double checking myself, all for naught. She was unperturbed by me. Unmoved. She was total and complete. I was relatively insignificant. Like a butterfly landing on a mountain. Her woody cells represented to me her stable sense of self. Another way of saying it: she sat within her own centre.

Discovering this quality in another did truly set me free.

So, yes, we can be soft, sensitive, gentle, and walk lightly, but stabilising one’s self is divine and sublime too.

The fig tree needs the grown, stronger, harder bits to reach out and fruit each year.

Our emotional lives too, need some solid, bounded areas. Too concerned with ‘gentle and nice’ will not always be the best path. Nice will too often send us skipping over or sliding across the gritty, meaningful parts of life.

I am not saying toughen up. Not in the old, post-war way. I am saying grow strong, when you’re ready. Push gentle-like upon the edges. Go softly toward the discomfort. Stay in the challenges of a friend’s personality, or a coworkers rotten ways, or whatever it is you are quick to avoid. Play in the sand a little. Dig a little deeper to touch the grit and make it yours. Make a life that aligns you with your deepest, truest Self. Find your deeper, stiller centre.

Many come to yoga to be more supple. I come to find joy in stability. And that requires developing a little lignin to keep the cell walls strong.

~~~

Another definition I like:

“Lignification is a dynamic, flexible process reinforcing cell walls according to the different needs (water conduction, mechanical support, defence) of the plant during its life.”

Note my use of the word hard: The word is not nice but this whole article is about getting a little more interested in hardness. It does not have to automatically mean bad, dead, obstructive, old, lifeless, mean, unresponsive.

Please do note: the process cannot be reversed in plants. As humans we could take some care: while we hold firm to that which bounds and stabilises us we can also keep fluid those places where love, compassion and joy can thrive.