#109 Charlie: I’m Done with Growing

Show Notes  On today’s podcast I plan to be perhaps be just a bit controversial by challenging one of our society’s prime objectives—personal growth. In truth, this may be a follow up to the show we did with my son on the tension between personal improvement and personal contentment. My question, I guess, is this: does there ever come a time in life when you are done growing? Do you ever get to “arrive” and be done with this exhausting effort “to be the best you, you can be?” I can put the blame on my thoughts on author Neil Gaimen who wrote this in his poem After Silence: And somebody has to say that we never need to grow forever. That we, like the trees, can reach our full growth, and mature, in wisdom and in time, that we can be enough of us… Who’ll whisper it: We’re done. We grew. Enough. Neil Gaimen struck on chord that has been ringing in my ears for some time now: that our obsession with “growth” comes from an almost unhealthy dissatisfaction with ourselves.  Why do I have to be the best Charlie I can be? Why can’t I be, just Charlie? I heard an interview with B.B. King when he said to up and coming blues guitarists: “Quit trying to be the best one, just try to be a good one.” For more with Charlie Hedges please visit www.thenextchapter.life