COMMENT: Personal growth means constant evolution
As Jerry Fish says in his song, ‘Be yourself, mistakes and all, say you’re sorry when you’re wrong, just be yourself, mistakes and all.’
Why is it that to become the best version of ourselves we feel as though we have to kill off the version of ourselves that exists now? Why do we have a vision in our minds of some perfect, utopian version of who we think we might be if things had worked out better in some way. If God or life had or hadn't intervened, we'd be this person who would be so much better than who we are now?
All too often what we think of as growth, is actually a form of self-annihilation. We are encouraged to abandon our past as though it was something to run from in fear and shame. Real growth is a process of evolution, and evolution can always trace its lineage back to where it came from.
Integrating that past into the present means accepting it for just what it was, and for accepting yourself for who you were, without recrimination. You did what you did because you couldn’t do any better. You were blind to the parts of yourself that were either destructive to you or to others. It’s what Carl Jung called the shadow, the unknown parts of our psyche. He spoke about making the darkness conscious. All he meant was becoming conscious of our blind spots in how we act and react. We have to look for patterns so ingrained that we don’t realise we have them. We find them, break them and make better ones.
We don’t abandon who we were; we evolve our thinking, our reactions become responses, our actions become curated choices. We tend the garden vigorously until it grows all the things we want to grow and we look out for weeds. Interestingly, there is no such thing as a weed, just plants for which we have no use. Habits are the same. Other people’s habits may not suit us, or ours them. Tend your own garden and don’t bother with theirs.
Growing a better you isn’t a battle against who you were. It’s a respectful acceptance that you managed to survive but that some of the things that helped you do that no longer have a place in your life. You’ve got to practice compassion for yourself. You have to learn to love even the parts of which you are ashamed, or that you regret. In order to see them and to feel that way about them means you have thrown light on part of your shadow. If they didn’t exist to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed, then you haven’t grown at all.
You can’t change any part of yourself without showing that part some love. You’ve got to soothe and forgive, and in time let go of the feelings attached to whatever memory you carry. Let it go. It still exists but there’s no more investment in the past.
There’s no point rejecting the past and no point in trying to excuse it either. Whatever happened, happened. You are here now with a future stretching out ahead of you. Make a choice to walk into that future unencumbered by the weight of the past but carrying the knowledge of how it can happen and so living in a way that minimises that potential.
I often refer to my past. Not to beat myself or to shock you: I accept that I failed often but I’m far less likely to do so now because I know my vulnerabilities. I know what may trigger a reaction instead of giving a response. I know when to let something wash over me without letting it in, and most of the time I get it right. Not always, because evolution is a work in progress not a fait accompli. Nothing from my past has gone away. It’s all being used daily to measure how I’m doing now.
Wrongs done to me are lessons in forgiveness and compassion. They are also lessons in what not to do wrong. I know how it feels and I don’t want to visit that on anyone else. My capacity for empathy evolved too, knowing that I have done wrong also. Now that I have walked a mile in the shoes of another it’s easier to see the bigger picture.
All of this comes with a rarely considered warning. Unless we integrate the past, our unconscious, and our patterns, we can’t evolve our thinking. We will become unbalanced, overwhelmed, prone to self- righteousness and superiority, all of which means that we will devolve, not evolve. Until we are at home with the past, we can’t use the present to inform the future.
Only perfect diamonds are flawless, and even those have been cut away to remove perceived imperfections. Anything extraneous is removed to fit an aesthetic, but the rough stone pulled from the dirt was always a diamond, flaws and all. I’d rather be a rough diamond who knows and accepts all of himself than anyone else’s idea of what I’m supposed to be. If there’s anything to be cut away it will be the things I said, thought or did that caused pain to others. What’s left will still be me. It’ll just be a me that I can be fairly certain will bring more love to the table than I take from it.
As Jerry Fish says in his song, ‘Be yourself, mistakes and all, say you’re sorry when you’re wrong, just be yourself, mistakes and all.’