It is somehow upon us, the closing of one year and the beginning of another; a tipping point where culturally we are often encouraged to suddenly alter, prune and snip ourselves into better shapes, different shapes. But I like my shape just fine on 31st December 2016, and we are changed in fractional ways all the time anyway—by people, things, experiences that we initially brushed off as unimportant. It sounds so obvious out loud, but I think we can get so wrapped up in this urgent need to better ourselves, to learn and grow and improve, that we forget that it happens at an essential, cellular level without us even really trying. Put a different way, I'd rather grow like an oak tree than a skyscraper—I know which one of those has a chance of being intact, even stronger, hundreds of years later.