Becoming

Any writer is a word nerd, and I plead guilty. Finding the perfect word or making up a new one lifts my spirits in a way unlike anything else. Another category of word fun is dictionary digging—playing around with a common word that has many meanings, preferably contradictory. 

The other day I was reading an article explaining the world views of Plato and Aristotle. The author, one of my favourite columnists, Arthur Brooks, explained that the fundamental difference between the two philosophers was Plato’s view of reality as a fixed entity and Aristotle’s view that reality is characterized by change. Applying that to people, Brooks’ point was that to Plato, there is a fixed core that defines us, and to Aristotle every individual is perpetually in a state of becoming.  

My guess is that it’s a bit of both. There are ways in which I don’t think I have changed at all.  My desire for social justice, my optimism, my belief that most people are decent and trustworthy are things I have carried throughout my life. And yet, I never have the sense that I have finished evolving into the whole person I am meant to be.  The thing I like most about my life is that I am still growing. 

The Brooks article got me thinking about the word “becoming.” Maybe it sounds a little old-fashioned now, but I grew up hearing it used for appearances and actions. “That dress is very becoming,” someone might say, or the opposite, “that behaviour is not very becoming.” What in the world is an article of clothing or an infraction of manners in the process of becoming?  How can that word possibly apply?

Online Cambridge and Webster say “becoming” is an adjective that means attractive and suitable, and that is pretty much the end of the discussion. Nothing of philosophy at all in the word. I looked up the verb “become,” and I found a much longer and interesting history. Old English “becuman” meant “to come (to), approach, arrive, enter, meet with, fall in with; happen, befall; befit.”

Okay, I get the connection with befitting, but the rest of the meanings seem almost comical. By this standard, saying an outfit is becoming is rather like saying “that dress shows you are making progress towards a sense of style.”  Or perhaps, in this throwaway society one could argue that the only thing an article of clothing is becoming is landfill.  Then again, to say slurping soup is unbecoming does get at the idea that such behaviour is heading in the wrong direction.

Ah, vocabulary.  The stuff of endless weirdness. Time to give up on the dictionary and go back to Aristotle and Plato. Maybe one part of a satisfying life is to have a clear sense of what about ourselves we never want to change—our core identity, as shown in how we behave and what we believe. Maybe the other part of that satisfying life is feeling that we continue on an exciting trajectory of growth and change. Josh Groban  said it best in “Let Me Fall”

Someone I am is waiting for courage

The one I want, the one I will become will catch me

What a great image.  We jump and the person we become in jumping is the one who catches us. There’s a Laurel waiting for me whom I haven’t met yet.  It may not be an easy path to her. There are occasions to rise to, choices to make. The Platonic side keeps me grounded, but the Aristotelian side reminds me that only if I jump can I find my wings.