The Black Pepper vine is a spice now entering its season in our garden to yield green spikes initially with inflorescence and later with green berries. The green berries over about three months would become larger and turn red, which is the time to harvest them and have them dried in the sun to turn them to be Black pepper.
These creeper plants have a long history of seventy or more years, planted my parents. They continue to give the berries every year.
The berries on the green spikes are at different stages of formation and growth as seeing the above photos. I notice that as a common phenomenon in about thirty-five trees in our garden.
That interested me and made me make enquiries. One explanation which looked plausible is that the older vine will bear the inflorescence initially followed by the younger branches. Often they mature around the same time.
It summarises something profound for adult education. As adults we have qualities and behaviour which have become mature corresponding to our ageing; some of our behaviour are yet to carry wholeness and maturity and some stay infantile!
This differential formative process is a natural tapestry of our lives! The self directed learning appraisal through a structured audit periodically often helps us to appreciate this spectrum of developmental stage of our attitudes and behaviour and journey towards revising our lives!
This adult formation process, which occurs in a consistent and consolidated manner in mid life (40-65 years) can be facilitated by regular personal appraisal, which would indicate the living and learning pathway we are on!
It is this personal conversation with one self at the conscious level, which assists us in revising our lives to live with the awakened consciousness in different domains of our lives. Most of us remain anthropometrically and morphologically family constant in appearance in mid life. I was reminded of it when a senior citizen who was seeing me after twenty years said to me" You look the same when I saw you last".
But during this season, the inner formation takes place changing our attitudes, behaviour, beliefs, relationships and the interior truths about our Self. Most of us would have attended to make our persona (ego self and shadow) to metamorphose into our true self which according to Carl Young is our Self. Most men would have evolved to incorporate the subconscious feminine dimension anima, present in their lives to make their masculine Self integrated. Similarly women would have incorporated the subconscious masculine animus to feel integrated with their feminine Self. So much happens in our inward formation while our physical growth is stationary in mid life.
I want to suggest that the inflorescence which becomes the black pepper symbolises a formative journey ! The inner formative journey from the raw self we are, to be the Self we have been destined for, happens in the mid life when we have an attitude to revise our life according to the enlightenment we receive.
We move on from mid life to be an elder after 65 years according to the psycho-social theory of Erik Erikson. How refreshing we would have become to others, if we entered the elder years, with life becoming effervescent for others to feel inspired!
The flowers offer nectar to Sunbird! Our life can become such an offering to those who become weary while living and enduring!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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