83: Horizontal and Vertical

For most of my life, I thought growth meant expansion.

Do more. Help more people. Take greater responsibility. Build something larger. If something worked, expand it.

I still think there is great value in this way of living. Much of what we build in our careers, organizations, and communities requires this outward energy.

Recently, however, I have begun wondering whether there is another direction of growth.

Not horizontal, but vertical.

Horizontal growth expands our reach. Vertical growth deepens our source.

Horizontal contribution is relatively easy to see. More people are helped. A program becomes larger. A business grows. Research reaches a wider audience. We gain responsibility, influence, or recognition.

Vertical growth is much less visible.

Sometimes it looks like nothing is happening.

We read. Think. Walk. Write something that may never be published. Have long conversations without a clear purpose. Try music, art, or something completely outside our professional identity. We follow a question simply because something inside tells us it matters.

From the outside, this may look unproductive.

But perhaps this is where something genuinely new begins.

The difficulty is that horizontal and vertical growth require very different environments.

Horizontal work thrives on schedules, deadlines, meetings, execution, responsiveness, and measurable results.

Vertical work needs something almost opposite.

Space.

Silence.

Rest.

Wandering.

Enough time for an idea to develop before we know what it will become.

Modern professional life gives us remarkably little of this. In fact, the more successful we become, the harder it becomes to find.

Success brings more meetings, more responsibility, more people who need us. We become increasingly important horizontally while gradually losing the space required to go vertically.

I wonder whether this is one reason people sometimes remain at the top for too long.

We assume leadership means continuing to be needed.

But perhaps great leadership eventually means building something that no longer needs us.

Develop people. Create the system. Give away responsibility.

Then leave.

Not because the work failed, but because it succeeded.

That creates the possibility of becoming empty again.

To step away from being the person who knows and return to being someone who wonders.

To enter an unfamiliar field.

To become a beginner again.

Perhaps the most creative lives do not move continuously outward. They move in cycles:

Go deep → discover → create → offer → build → give away → withdraw → go deep again.

This is very different from our usual career model of building, rising, leading, staying, and eventually retiring.

And perhaps it requires something difficult from the ego.

Can I create something valuable without needing to remain at its center?

Can I allow someone else to take over what I built?

Can I become less important in one world so that I have enough space to discover another?

I am beginning to think that a rich life needs both directions.

Horizontal contribution allows what we have discovered to reach others.

Vertical exploration makes sure that what we offer actually comes from somewhere deep.

Maybe the goal is neither endless expansion nor permanent withdrawal.

It is learning the rhythm between them.

Deep enough to discover something genuinely our own.

Outward enough to give it away.

Free enough to leave it behind.

Empty enough to discover again.