Growth

We as a society spend a lot of time focusing on personal growth. We talk about it, and write about it, and meditate on it. We read books and attend classes and join groups devoted to this idea of growing. Of changing. Of evolving. Of becoming better versions of ourselves. Hell, there's a multi-billion dollar self-help industry built around the cause. And though there are certainly some terrible abuses of the idea, in general I think we can all agree that personal growth is a good thing.

There's this dirty little secret about it, though, that no one ever talks about.

It sucks. Personal growth sucks. A lot.

Sure, once you've crossed through the valley of shadows you can see that it was worth it, but that bit in the middle where you actually have to do all the growing and the changing? That part sucks.

For some reason, the blurbs on the back of self-help books never mention that.

To truly grow and change as a person, you have to confront the very ugliest parts of yourself. You have to be able to stand alone with yourself and really see those things that need work. Every destructive habit, and bad pattern, and poor choice is washed in 1000 watts of florescent light and there is nowhere to hide from them. Even if you close your eyes against the glare, their images are seared into your eyelids. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to watch their carefully constructed facades crumble in the face of The Truth. No one looks around at their own ugliness and says "Oh, look at how much work I have to do! How fabulous!" It is much, much easier to turn around and run hell for leather away from that sight than it is to step forward and decide to make a change.

Anyone who says differently is probably selling a path to enlightenment.

The process is brutal, and unforgiving, and painfully slow. Progress is almost impossible to see while you're in the moment and more often than not you're going to take the longest possible route from Point A to Point B. There are no shortcuts. Your feet are unsteady and your hands and knees are raw from all the falling down, and scrambling, and climbing. The people on whom you thought you could rely have evaporated like a morning mist and all you want to do is turn back, to wrap yourself in the safe comfort of the familiar. It is a constant and exhausting battle against the worst parts of yourself and you will never meet a fiercer, or more determined, opponent.

But what's the alternative?

Inertia, blindness, and a perpetually repeating cycle of Things That Don't Work. The slow shrinking and dimming of your world until everything is dull, and comfortable, and safe.

I don't know about you, but I'll take the brutality of growth over the sticky mire of a stagnant life any day.

To quote Steve Pavlina, . . . getting moving again is far better than remaining stuck. . . It sure beats dying a slow death while waiting for the vultures to swoop down.

It's time for me to get moving again.

Comments

[Hilly]

Amen sistah! Nobody every mentions that while in this "growth" you are going to sit and be uncomfortable in your own skin before you get there!

[VT]

welcome to Feri. this is why they say it's not for everyone.

[Tag]

I have some enlightenment I'd like to sell ya...you'll have to become broken awake though.

;-)

luvs ya aamandarin!