THE IMPORTANCE OF
GROWTH
by Dr. Daniel A. Bochner
Growth is the meaning of life. Why are we here? Growth. If
you ask why growth?, then we get into a whole different realm of
philosophy or spirituality. Nevertheless, the lowest common
denominator of all things, beyond dispute or moral philosophy, is
growth. This is an important matter to understand because it leads us
directly to understanding motivation in general as well as the biological
necessity of connection to our world and each other (and that sounds
kind of spiritual, doesn’t it?).
First of all, let me point out that the universe is expanding
(growth), that everything in the biological world starts out small and
gets larger (growth), and that, even in metaphysics, all ideas tend
toward attempts at inclusion or expansion (growth). It is not a surprise,
then, that from a psychological perspective, unless we are growing in
some sense, we become depressed, stagnant, feel stifled, and maybe
even fall apart. What I am saying here is: when people are having
emotional problems, it tends to be the result of stunted growth.
Now that is a pretty strange thing to say, I suppose, so I’d better
try to explain what I mean. Human emotional growth follows human
physical growth. In relationships with others, we find emotional
sustenance in interaction, just as we find physical sustenance of growth
by consuming food and drink. In relationships with others, we protect
our feelings in interaction by expressing anger or trying to avoid, just as
in physical protection we defend ourselves through aggression or
escape. By sustaining ourselves and protecting ourselves we allow for
both emotional and physical growth. And when we develop some
confidence that we are, and will be, both protected and sustained, we
begin to expand our realm of emotional growth into the sphere of
interpersonal relationships.
We protect and sustain the physical well-being and emotional
aspects of our family members (especially children but also other
adults). Caring for others is a more mature type of growth that occurs
between feeling responsible and feeling a need to care adequately for
one’s self. When we care for others, we grow beyond our own
independent selves. We care for our children to make sure that they
grow physically, but we also attempt to feed them emotionally and
protect them from an overabundance of hurts. The development of a
balance between responsibility and self-care begins when we are
receiving emotional sustenance and protection from our own care-
givers. If it is sufficiently demonstrated to us that we are important,
but must care about others (especially those who have cared for us),
we develop a confidence about the fact that sustenance and protection
will be generally, most of the time, adequate. When we gain that
confidence, we maintain the confidence that we are important enough
to be treated well by others. We also develop the ability to feel
responsible for how our actions affect others, because we truly care
about them, and we develop the ability to take care of others, not only
because we care about them but also because they are an extension of
ourselves (growth).
These essential individual and family connections are the building
block necessary for the growth of a community and for a society,
where rules for conduct (laws) are balanced with individual knowledge
of right and wrong in interpersonal and intergroup communications.
The whole concept comes full circle when you think about the fact that
both physical and emotional sustenance and self-protection are more
likely in larger groups. From the beginning of man, and in the
interactions of herds or schools of fish, we see that there is safety and
efficiency in numbers, as well as a better chance of being protected.
We are all intimately connected in every way by the existence of
emotional and physical needs and desires. Our own growth is a central
factor in remaining a part of our families and communities.
Growth is at the center of every kind of motivation. That is,
everything we strive for, everything we attempt to achieve, everything
we want or desire, that is...everything we do, is based on a need for
growth. We might want a bigger car, we might want more education,
we might want to get to know more people, or learn how to love, and
all of it is based on a need for growth. In psychotherapy people strive
for better communication so that they can grow within themselves and
through connections with others. Part of that communication involves
getting to know the inner self, to integrate parts of one’s self about
which one is not quite aware. Growth involves all kinds of
incorporation, integration, and communication.
Since growth is so central to our existence, without it we begin to
have serious emotional (and sometimes physical) problems. Obviously
these problems can begin in a lack of connection with others, but we
can also start having problems because we do not care for or protect
ourselves well enough, because we do not care for or protect anyone
else enough (these last two are often intimately related), or because we
have not been, or fear that we will not be, cared for or protected well
enough. When there is no problem in these areas we continue to grow
and we maintain our mental health. We continue to strive. But when
we are not growing, we often become depressed and feel we cannot
grow. We can become anxious with the idea that we might damage
someone else’s growth or with fear that we cannot meet the demands
necessary to grow. When we are cut off from others we can feel a
lack of growth from the lack of connection (which is, as I have
explained, a kind of growth in itself).
As indicated above, there are many ways of feeding and
protecting ourselves and others. Intellectual growth or financial growth
help sustain emotional growth, just as learning more about our selves
does. When we insist upon our right to pursue these goals or others,
we are protecting ourselves so that we can continue to grow. Similarly,
we like to see these kinds of growth in those that we love, and we tend
to be willing to protect that growth in them since they are extensions of
ourselves, which helps us with our own sense of family and community
growth.
The meaning of life? Well...I don’t know if we will ever know
what that is. But if you want to think about the lowest common
denominator, the one concept that comes close to explaining why
things are the way they are, the one concept that stands at the center of
everything from biology to the connection between people, inanimate
objects, and the cosmos... that one concept is growth.