Personal Growth Is An Exploration of the Unknown

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence
Norman Podhoretz

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If you use a computer, you probably play some sort of computer game, even if it’s solitaire. I have a couple that I play, but one of my favorites is Civilization II. In case you’ve never heard of it, Civilization is a simulation game. At the beginning of the game you are a lone wandering tribe. The gameboard is dark. You can see only the areas of it where you have been. As the game goes on your population multiplies. You learn new science and technology. More and more of your world becomes visible as you explore it. You encounter other civilizations. Some of these are cooperative, others are aggressive.Personal growth is like that. When we are young we don’t know very much about our selves or the world around us. We explore the world, having new experiences and incorporating some of what we learn and experience into our personalities, both unconsciously and consciously.

As we get older yet we begin to explore our inner world. We find some things within our personality that we like, that enable us to pursue further growth. Other things we find are detrimental to our well-being. If we want to grow up, we take control of ourselves. The things in ourselves that we like, that benefit ourselves and those around us, we encourage and cultivate. The things we don’t like, that are self-destructive, self-limiting, or harmful to others, we try to minimize and weed out.

We become aware that the personalities we have are not preordained by some god, our genes, or our environment. We may have predispositions to act in a given way, but whether we take the easy road, abdicating responsibility and control, and follow these predispostions is up to us. Many people just grow old. They don’t grow up. When they are eighty they are the same as they were when they were twelve because they took the easy way, because they told themselves they weren’t responsible.

You can stay a child, and remain a child when you are grey-haired and collecting your retirement. You can stay in the old familiar territory that is your self. Or you can grow up and grow out. The limits we are born with are not real limits. If you push beyond them, into the darkness that surrounds the sphere of the mind that you have known, you find a whole new world.

The choice is yours.

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