Artistic Growth

The annoying thing about growing is that it feels worse before it feels better. You feel worse at the thing before it gets better, and we have to learn to tolerate that.

The first thing that happens when you start to grow is awareness. You become aware that there’s a need for growth, and that alone requires an incredible amount of humility and discipline. Then comes the assessment. How much does this need to grow? How hard is this going to be? Is it really necessary? Could I just look away? Could I stop noticing it? Our bodies are built toward not growing and not changing, that’s just the law of physics we’re up against, so the real question becomes: do I conquer that, or do I ignore it? How bad is it, really? How much is it bugging me?

Then there’s a period of tremendous discomfort as we accept that we need to grow at all. Increasing awareness, increasing frustration, and underneath it a desire to collapse into some kind of story that lets us off the hook, a story that makes us a victim of our own life instead of someone still becoming. In the age of social media and instant responses, not getting instant feedback that you’re actually growing is exacerbated, but it’s also an old, old pain. Am I really growing? Is it changing? I can’t tell yet. That’s a worry as old as time, we’ve just gotten less able to tolerate the ambiguity of it.

Here’s what I know about that pull toward the story instead of the discomfort. For years I used to joke that I was too cool for Hallmark movies. Not enough money in it, I’d say. It’s shitty, I’m not good at it, I’m more Aaron Sorkin style. What I was actually doing was avoiding the discomfort of that hope and optimism, that genuine, gentle world made me nervous, I didn’t believe myself in it. So instead of doing the work to believe myself over there, I wrote a really cool story. I organized my identity around being tough and not meant for that, decided it was cool, decided the whole thing wasn’t for me, and I didn’t give myself the attention or the time my body needed to actually learn it.

Maybe we all do this. We write a story to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of growth. I invite you to ask yourself where you’re writing a story instead of hearing your body, or your artist, asking you to grow.