On Growth

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

Pain is a natural fertilizer for personal growth.

It’s not love, mind you. It’s relentless, ongoing emotional distress.

Pain is to growth what water, manure and sun are to a plant or a tree.

It’s what makes it grow into a splendid bush of roses or a magnificent scented cherry tree.

Love is just the opposite.

Love is as pernicious and contrarian to personal growth as too much care and overprotection is to a budding tree.

It is true what they say: too much love can kill something or someone.

One has to learn to detach themselves a bit from the subject or the object of their attention.

My life has been a chain of diverse experiences, as much as anyone’s. They all came at me, the good and the bad alike. And I took them all standing, like a man.

None helped me grow up and evolve into the man I am today, than extremely shocking and traumatic events.

You see folks, you expect to graduate, get a job, get married and have kids. You expect and you pray and you work towards it.

But the thing is while you do that, you unknowingly move inexorably closer to moments of anguish and mortification such as the death of a relative or even worse.

And by worse I mean that state of mind that engulfs you when someone you live or care deeply about falls sick or goes through a bad patch.

That powerlessness is absolute. You cannot fight it. You cannot reject it. It is outside your agency. It is worse than death.

That’s when you realize how truly alone you are.

And that enables you to understand that regardless of what goes on, good or bad, growth is all you have left.

It’s either that or you blow your head.