There is a season in our lives when we should be less concerned with growth and more concerned with the harvest. Driving through the farmlands around my house, it is so satisfying to see the giant combines rolling down the fields with 18-wheel trucks driving in parallel, catching the harvest in their trailers. The point of harvesting is to enjoy the fruits of all the work that came before.

We spend a lot of time encouraging our children to go outside their comfort zones. This is good because children can tend to be overly cautious. They are fearful and in tears over an activity that we objectively know they will enjoy; after all, we’ve selected it for them. While we should push our children to explore new frontiers to grow, it can be easy to forget that the same is not true for adults.

There is a point where we need to be less concerned with developing new skills and knowledge and more concerned about making the ones we’ve already developed work. This is not to imply that there is an end to learning, but it is to say that part of harvesting is sharing. Taking what we know and passing it on to those coming along the trail behind us.

I think of this in terms of working in our strengths. When we reach a point of deep knowledge, whether in our field of study, our profession, or our hobby, it is incumbent upon us to pass that knowledge on. It feels easy to us, but that doesn’t make it less valuable or actually easy. It feels easy because we possess skill and mastery. This is why a first-year teacher can appear frazzled throughout the year while the two-decade veteran has an aura that could be read as blasé.

Grow, yes; develop, yes; work hard, yes. But don’t forget to harvest.