How to ‘Grow’

Our societies are attached to a phrase which it can be a bit too easy to assume we understand. The talk is of people ‘growing’ and of having ‘grown’ which alludes to some kind of important psychological evolution and development. But what does ‘growing’ really involve? What is it we are developing a capacity to do when we so-called grow and what are we leaving behind? And, crucially, how might we train ourselves to grow a little more – and a little more quickly?

What we may essentially be pointing to with the idea of growth is the ability to stop responding to situations in the present through lenses unconsciously distorted by our psychological histories and, especially, the quirks and biases bequeathed to us by our invariably somewhat complicated childhoods.

A person who ‘grows’ is likely to be able to look more fairly at other people and situations – and to recognise the extent to which they might be aggravating conflict or heaping unwarranted suspicion or ruining their chances – because they bear within them presumptions shaped by hard-to-recall experiences of loneliness, fear, betrayal and humiliation. A person who has grown will more readily be able to check their first unhelpful responses to things and reach for a more complicated, objective set of explanations. It may not always have to be their companion’s fault. Perhaps a mistake was – in this instance – innocent. It might be their role to say a small sorry. Maybe they’ve misunderstood what was really being meant.

To grow is to acquire the courage for new sorts of questions:

— What if I were repeatedly defending myself against closeness and hope?

— What if I was using busy-ness to block encounters with my own mind?

— What if I secretly manoeuvred to end a relationship prematurely because I felt safe with feelings of isolation and rejection?

— What if I was running away from opportunities to show myself authentically to others?

These questions can, in personal life, be what we might in science describe as Copernican; questions that involve a fundamental rethinking of one’s place in the order of things.

The more one ‘grows’, the more one might have to give up a certain sort of confidence and certainty – not in the name of meekness or self-hatred, but for the sake of a newfound scepticism, a patient modesty and a humorous readiness to wryly acknowledge error and admit to fragility. 

A person who has grown might:

— Operate with a vivid sense of how much they misunderstand

— Appreciate their fear of intimacy and joy

— More often say, ‘I don’t know‘ or ‘Let me perhaps think more about that.’ Even sometimes, on really special occasions, ‘I think you may have a point.’

— Be more receptive to friendships built around a recoginition of vulnerability and anxiety.

What spurs growth is – unfortunately – almost always pain. We grow because we were fired and then, already shattered, were finally able to look at what colleagues around us might have found difficult about us for many years. We grow because we lost a major love – and at last (as we weep in a corner of the airport lounge) see that we might have been far too guarded or demanding or frightened. We grow because, in an hour of need, we can’t bear to be alone any more and realise (as if for the first time) what friendship could be for.

The greatest sign of growth might be a readiness to calmly take on board the scale of one’s silliness; how many basic things one is still learning; what a child one still is. A person who has grown won’t see anything offensive at all, indeed will stoically accept the idea, that they have been, very often indeed, over some quite major things (if we can put this very politely) a bit of an idiot – and will be intensely committed to trying to be rather less of one in the precious time that remains.