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This is where I put yet another plug for my profession: Radical growth can be fucking scary as all hell, but if you recognize your in the middle of it - find someone who's been there done that to help you navigate, or hire a life coach to help you with the big picture while you grapple with the details. Our society puts way to much pressure on us to "go it alone", and that friggin' loner hero cowboy bullshit is really getting old. OK, stepping down from the soapbox.
Sometimes, yeah - when we grow relationships and entire modalities of living are lying by the wayside... I've got a very personal relationship with outgrowing my surroundings, leaving them behind, setting them up on fire, running away and starting again. But sometimes, your relationships and modalities grow with you - And that my friends is the sweetest most surreal radical growth ever. Maybe I'm out of line for saying this too, but I think this is more of a maturity and respect issue - if you do fucking know who you are, and what you want, then respecting yourself and others enough to be forthcoming with the direction in which your heading and why is "half the battle" (knowing is half the battle - GI Joe)...
But when I got married, and definitely when I had my son. I saw that a truly happy life, a connected life, one that matters and has value both to yourself and others, is not just about my personal growth and what I need. Other people have needs too and if I love and respect them enough to want to keep them in my life, then I must consider their needs just as much as my own.
You can stay a perpetual self-seeking nomad forever if you want to, but I have chosen not to. The costs would be too high. So I find innovative and adjustable ways to keep the free spirit alive and well. It is possible, it just takes a lot more effort.
But generally I say "Fuck permanence". It's a fallacy anyway. The only sure thing is you live and one day you die. Everything else is temporary, so you may as well choose what works for today and worry about next week when it gets here.
Interesting post.
Kelly
@Todd: Yeah, "shining the light of awareness" is probably the most powerthing anyone can do in these situations. I like the light metaphor, so thank you for saying that.
@Maria: In my experience, you are very right about people thinking you are crazy AND wanting your life.
Radical growth is only radical relative to what YOU are comfortable with. I think that in the end, life is all about contributing to happiness and doing more good than bad. By, "contributing to happiness" I am refering simply to being happy yourself, thus contributing to the overall happiness of the world. If you are pressuring yourself into radically growing, then it's likely that strife will result. If, however, your growth is comfortably fast, then you'll probably be quite happy. Things get messy when there's this grinding pressure to always advance. When we are "in the zone" of personal growth, synchronicities occur and we tend to get where we want to go in the most efficient manner.
Aw shucks.... *blushing furiously*... thanks for highlighting my late night ramblings in your post. I'm just glad they made some kind of sense. You never can tell at 1am. I'm glad you found some wisdom in there. Now will someone please tell my husband to accept the truth - not only am I wise, I AM ALWAYS RIGHT!
And Monk, you crack me up. I think muesli went up my nose...
Kelly
@monk, oops, my mistake, it should've read "it's amazing that a fucking hot stud genius guy like Clay could come along..."
Putting down roots doesn't always equal stagnation. Trying new things all the time does not always lead to growth. From '94 to '99 I moved all over the place (Illinois to New Orleans to Connecticut) and had a bunch of short-term "relationships". My career was moving rapidly, but as a person I was rotting from the inside.
Then I spent 5 years in one place with one woman, and grew like crazy! The rot stopped and I learned to, ah, tell the difference between sex and intimacy. Among other things.
This part:"All growth propels the grower in some direction, even if the destination (if there is one) is far from clear. But since we can
Like that country song says. "You start walking your way, I'll start walking mine. We'll meet in the middle under that old Georgia Pine." That has been so true in my 2nd marriage. My wife and I are growing old together but we are on different paths. It's when we meet back under that pine tree that the good times roll. I hope this makes some sense to someone. It did to me as I typed it.
@Stephen: I'm afraid I don't understand. You're saying that if you plan to profit from radical growth then it wont be mistaken for selfishness and narcissism? You obviously don't mean profit (just) in the monetary sense. But how do you grow and not profit from it? In my view, if you've grown, then you've profited. Growth is its own end. It is sufficient unto itself. There's no profited or not profited from personal growth as far as I can tell.
Moving around a lot and following one's whims from experience to experience could very easily be a kind of caffeine of life, giving us the feeling of zipping forward now, but dragging us down later, and, if abused, causing some irreparable damage.
You expressed this idea yourself in describing some of the growth experiences as being "not worth it". If one profits from them, then how could they be not worth it? Because there is another, better, growth, that is being missed out on.
Worse, some experiences can be more of a hallucinogen, giving us the simulated feeling of moving forward while our life is really sliding back. Television and video-gaming come to mind as addictive behaviors that have this kind of effect, and in each of those cases one has a simulated environment that has provided you with synthetic goals to accomplish that very often have no value in the real world. It's a micro-economy where the exchanges very often have no relevance in real life and sometimes are even negatively affect us. (Of course, such economies can also, at times, be good for us.)
Sometimes the experiences we seek in life are sought not because they're really good for us, but because we've gotten enmeshed in some micro-economy that we only need because we think we need it... and then we have Quitting Things and Flakiness all over again.
In regards to this...
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You expressed this idea yourself in describing some of the growth experiences as being
You have a knack of writing things in such a way that I sometimes feel you have been over here reading my journals for the past 30 years.
I have lived that life you just described and I have paid a lot of the price you talked about as well. Including the divorces. And yes...that is plural.
The bag of Life Lessons that I have picked up along the way of the many jobs, many adventures and the many people I have met along the way has been pricelss. I wouldn't trade this education in the school of life for any PhD out there.
So here is my free advice...maybe it will keep you from some cut glass in your bare feet while you are out walking on life's winding road. Go anywhere, explore anything, drink in all that life has to offer. But first,set your moral compass and your guiding core values so that you always know which way is home. And, as long as you know WHO you are, it doesn't matter what else you are learning, and you CAN meet a person who shares your CORE values. It's the partnership of core values that turns out to be the secret of longest lasting relationships that survive anything.
Good luck on Life's journey.
In terms of what Sean said about . . .
That's all I have to say.
I think I agree completely with the points you make. I was simply trying to elucidate Stephen's comments. I think he was really only submitting a case study of his life with some follow-up thoughts; giving an example of some experiences that many perceive to be good growing experiences, but which actually turned out to be not worth it.
You stated that "The Price of Radical Growth is Sometimes NOT Worth It" and this begs the question, "how can I tell?"
I think, in the end, Stephen addressed that issue a bit.
"I would submit that Radical Growth is worth it, if you build a plan to profit by it." (Stephen)
I like that. Growth, even real positive growth, needs to be put into a context. One needs to "plan", or put growth within a larger context, perhaps even the ever-elusive "big picture", and if you can do that, and it still looks positive, then it's worth it.
I don't think growth could even be well defined without a context, but people often have ideas about what they want and what they should do, and these ideas are often only consider from within a very limited context. (Perhaps that's why micro-economies work.) How does this experience affect me now with my immediate goals? 1 year from now with my short term goals? 10 years from now? When I'm dead? (It makes the definition of growth a bit tricky, because it depends so much on perspective.)
In any case, you wrote a very good piece. It gives much food for thought. Better yet it feeds us a chance to consider the rules that we live by. To err is human. To introspect is human as well... or at least should be.
Everything happens for a reason! I believe I decided to go to your blog tonight because I was meant to read this post! You gave me some very good insight on things that have happened to me in the last few years and was not aware of happening! I believe that I have grown alot in just the last 2 1/2 years and have had to deal with the whole growing out of relationships pahse of it. I feel I have alienated friends and contacts for a time, and it was necessary for me to do that in order to learn and grow. Thank you for putting that a little more in perspective for me!
"Growth has Both VELOCITY AND DIRECTION"
Thinking back to past relationships (yes, I had one that did suffer and end from my desire to grow), I can attest to your comment about some relationships not surviving this kind of thing. Not only that, it can scary as hell - for me at least.
And yet, I jump on that bandwagon and do it anyway. I would say that I am in a unique position that I have found a reason to be greatful for. Unattached, I am exploring and learning a hell of a lot about myself.
Great post dude
The question of whether or not the price is worth it or not depends solely on the Purpose of growth. Why do you want to grow? If your simply bored and and want stimulation, then risking your relationships and career for the sake of rejuvenation is probably not called for. In that case, it is a bigger struggle for you to hold on to what you have and preserve those things on which depend the happiness of more people then just yourself.
However, radical growth sometimes has to take place not by choice, but as a consequence of some form of duty. It could be a spiritual calling, or an obligation of some sort. If this purpose forces you to make a choice, a change in the radical direction. Then I think that risking everything is the only right thing to do.
You just have to know the difference between the two situations.
After my mother took her own life, I felt as if my life needed a radical change. Initially, I thought that meant changing my job or going on vacation or doing something "crazy". I was fired up for the first time in ages. However, "real life" took over and I didn't make any such changes...I stagnated.
It wasn't until I went to therapy for grief a year later that my life began to change, unbeknownst to myself. In time, I grew confident of myself as a person and in my own beliefs. As more time past, I knew that this was the radical change. These changes led to the profound depression, heavy drinking, dissatisfaction with my job, the divorce I am now going through, the brief affair I had with someone I truly love, and my own suicide attempt.
After some time in the hospital, I learned about true perspective. My world view changed. I came to the realization that we are all being "conditioned" to conform, that if you don't define "success" as having all the material things in your life, the high-paying job, the wife, the kids, the house, the "American Dream", that you are not a grown up, you are a failure in the eyes of the world. Who's world? Not mine. I found that my values did not align with the world's and that for the first time in my life, I was OK with that. I found that I could live by my values and shrug those that I were not mine. That is not to say that I do whatever I want, but I finally feel that I have latitude and the ability to make "real" change, for me.
Some of the ideas on this blog remind me of Ayn Rand, but less rigid. I am actually just finishing her book "Atlas Shrugged", which is my second time through. Very inspirational reading.
Thanks for the posting and this blog. I have added to my list of daily reading!