Joining the LMP family tree this week is Jaye Davidson!
Jaye is a Gryffindor. She is bold in her speech and in her actions. She stands up for what she believes in and follows through with her decisions. She has a big heart with space enough for people of all walks of life, including Slytherins, such as myself. But what defines Jaye, at least for me, is that she has an innate propensity to grow.
Mine and Jaye’s friendship has seen slow and steady growth. We met as coworkers in August of 2018 but didn’t really become close until the pandemic was in full swing. We bonded on my first day at the office because she recognized that the background in my chosen profile picture was from the East Palisades trail, which she regularly hiked at the time. I flitted in and out of the office as a freelancer, but I always looked forward to our walk breaks and our extended Friday lunches whenever our schedules overlapped.
When we grew out of that office – just before the pandemic started – our friendship manifested instead as phone calls, hikes, lunches, and even as a rock climbing date. We got to know each other on a deeper and more personal level, and we got a sense of how we fit into each other’s lives.
In a way, I saw each of these moments of quality time as a seed of potential ambiguous opportunity. Jaye’s companionship and support is more than enough of a reason to spend time with her, but I also admired her abilities to befriend, to process, and to create, and I was hoping that some of her gregariousness would rub off onto me.
In a short couple dozen months of knowing Jaye, some of these seeds sprouted into unplanned adventure. Through Jaye, I hiked many trails around Atlanta, I ventured to Colombia to teach a Post-Production workshop at her friend’s company, and my sister and I met Jaye and her editor, Tara, in London, UK to celebrate the international premiere of her short film, The Lady Edison, which Jaye was producing and directing when I worked with her.
Over the years, our life paths have changed a lot in very different ways, but the constant thread in our friendship has been our mutual desire to grow independently and to further develop our characters. This trait of reciprocal understanding and appreciation of growth has been indicative of a secure, enduring friendship, and I tend to gravitate towards and rely on friends like Jaye who progress themselves while giving me space to grow into.
Growth has been important to me for as long as I can remember. As a proud lifelong learner, I have always strived for improvement in my endeavors, and I have always been drawn to and sought out people whose pursuits were inspired and not ordered.
Unfortunately, like curiosity, my relationship with growth hasn’t always been met with encouragement. My attempts at genuine growth through study through training and through speech were more often dismissed and scolded than inquired about or understood. I was excluded from academic programs because of my slow pace; I was shamed for trying to learn in my preferred learning style (visual); I was neglected in physical activities because I didn’t begin them with natural ability. And while none of these individual rejections were particularly callous, they tended to cut deep because of a personal truth: I love being a beginner.
Being a beginner is being a vessel for potential. It is exciting to me to start a new activity because each new activity opens up a new world that I can learn about, and each new world challenges me with new skills that I can better myself in. I love being a beginner because I confidently know nothing, making it the opportune time to measure how much I grow.
Growth, though, is a skill. And some areas are easier for me to grow in than others. So far, my growth has been most accelerated in areas of traditional schooling, in professional etiquette, and in acquiring technical career skills. Advancement in these areas has allowed me to provide for myself and to exist outside of a highly regulated system. But part of growth is outgrowing, and part of outgrowing is moving away from people, places, and things that are no longer sources of nourishment. Restraining myself from tending to these decaying plots is hard, especially as companionship withers away. But I’ve recently accepted that my social and emotional centers are the areas that need the most tending to because these centers are unbalanced.
This unbalance distresses me because, in the simplest terms, I am an aspiring sphere. More than anything, I want to be well-rounded enough to have an appreciation for the world I live in and for the people with whom I reside. Luckily, I am fortunate to have friends like Jaye to challenge me to grow in all realms of my life and not just the ones I am comfortable growing in.
Befriending Jaye has been a catalyst for mutual growth. I have helped Jaye across metaphorical and physical stepping stones; Jaye has helped me navigate the “real world” and has challenged me to open up and develop myself on social and emotional levels. We have both been there for each other in times of stress, and we trust that we will continue to be there for each other to celebrate our endeavors and adventures. Though I am not eagerly awaiting time to pass in our friendship, I genuinely can’t wait to watch Jaye and I grow individually, together.
You can read more about Jaye’s film, The Lady Edison, on the film’s official website and on its Facebook page.
Select referenced people and materials:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
12 Rules for Life by psychologist Jordan B. Peterson
All music for the podcast lovingly created by Ian T. Jones.
GROWTH