Growing Pains

Are we aware we are growing??

Physically it seems that one day we wake up and we have grown bigger somehow. Our shoes don’t fit, jeans shorten to show socks, shirts become like another layer of skin and it seems to us like the growth happens overnight. It occurs under our radar, without notice, until one day we question how we have become the way we are. Does the same happen mentally? I have heard that the most prominent stages of mental growth are roughly from the ages of 19-22. By prominent mental growth at this stage I mean finding a sense of self, a way of knowing that we are no longer like what we used to be. We find who we are on our own, away from everything that made up our childhood and molded us into who we have found ourselves to be at this point.

But now what?

Now we are left to fend for ourselves in the world and develop ourselves, create our own mold, be who we want to be; perhaps who we were intended to be.

And when this begins to happen is there a way of knowing? Some sign that indicates that growth has begun and we have embarked on a journey and are unknowing of its path. It’s like a water slide in which you go among its many twists and turns and simply slide along the water. Sometimes you get stuck when there isn’t enough water, and you need to push. Scary? Maybe, but it’s a good scary, the thrilling scary that makes us die to know what’s behind every turn.

I think I know I’m growing. Maybe its Calgary, maybe its university, maybe its God, maybe it’s the psychology courses, maybe its just me in a weird mood, but the more I think about it the more I know I have begun growing. I spend a lot more time alone, becoming friends with me, getting to love me. And it has to be the best part of this whole experience so far. I love myself in ways I didn’t before; I am my own best friend. I think a lot more about who I am, who I’m not, who I’d like to be (or in psychology it is described as my “ideal self”).

It all comes down to the fact that the first part of growing is developing the bare minimum of who you were to begin with, because if you don’t know before hand, how are you to measure growth? If you do not have your previous height marked on the wall, how are you to know that your new height exceeds it? There must be something to compare ourselves to. And that is what I have begun to do, that is the initial stage of growing, and that is where I am.