Latin phases are cool. When you say something in Latin, you just sound smart and it seems every good Latin phrase has deep hidden philosophical meanings. This phrase, Crescit Eundo is from an ancient poem and in modern times you will find this slogan on the New Mexico State Seal. You have to look very carefully, but there in script underneath two birds is the phrase.
The phrase means, “It grows as it goes.”
Now that sounds completely obscure and a bit obvious. Of course it, whatever it is, grows as it goes. However, there is a symbolic meaning here and that is where the phrase gains power. The Seal is slightly borrowed from the Mexican seal, in which a Mexican eagle is clutching a serpent in his beak and cacti in his claws. The New Mexico seal is of a similar nature, but with the protective oversight of the American Bald Eagle.
I remember visiting New Mexico when I was younger. I loved the town of Santa Fe. One early evening, on a clear day, a thunder and lightning storm started to roll into the area. Lightning started flashing and spreading across the sky. Pretty soon the dark, heavy rain clouds filled the sky as a roaring thunder shook the valley. As you looked up and saw the desert landscape enveloped by this powerful, growing storm you would then understand the slogan, “it grows as it goes.”
The spirit of New Mexico, wrapped up in a single phrase. The desert will grow as it goes, the storms will roll in and do what they will, the people will be what the people are going to be. We will grow as we go, perhaps with no clear concept of what direction, but we will grow and relish in the freedom to do so. Just as you could never contain a lightning storm, you can also never contain the spirit of a free people, especially the hard and rugged people that live in the desert.
The phrase also is asking me a question. Are you going anywhere? If you are, and you have a direction, then you will grow as you pursue it. Growth, according to this phrase requires a directional aim. The It in the phrase is actually us. The individual, with the freedom to pursue our own path, will grow to fill the space we seek to discover.
So I imagine the inverse is true as well, at it goes, so it grows.
Guy Reams (605)
