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Apr 24, 2019

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