Self-Growth is Tender
Everyone wants to “be,” but much fewer want to do the work.
It doesn’t matter what the work entails, it is seldom as fun as the aspect of “having arrived.”
But the truth is, we never arrive. We are never “there.” There is always more work to be done and more growth awaiting us.
I think we delude ourselves regularly in the prospect of envisioning a time, a place, a moment, an event where it has all finally snapped together. But I think that is a delusion, fostered out of hope and dreams, and satiated (temporarily) with the internal promise that one day…. the growth will finally be behind us and the rest of life will be spent enjoying and living as we fantasize.
My personal experience is that the growth is, in reality, nonstop. There are plenty of moments to look over our shoulder and see the vast distances that have been covered in our growth to date. These moments give us the fuel and ammunition to accelerate further towards the desired endgame we are aiming for. But whatever that endgame appears to be in one’s mind is, in fact, just an internal illusion of a finish line, a destination, a moment where we can exhale and believe that we are finally what we set out to be.
And then the sun rises the next day and, like it or not, the growth continues in ways that perhaps we have yet to contemplate, or through circumstances that we have not allowed for.
Whether the growth is anticipated and planned for, or if it comes out of left field and blindsides us with circumstances that we did not prepare for, it is always coming. There really is very little stasis in life. We just delude ourselves in believing that this is possible or true.
So as the pressures and circumstances of your life deliver lessons that you could not foresee or should have foreseen, the best any of us can do is to be gentle with ourselves as we navigate the troubled water and recognize that this truly is life. The rest is delusion. And if you are aware and present in life, then at a minimum, you can be assured that you are on the path of growth and that perhaps patience is the single greatest strength that any of us could possibly possess.