The root western cultural prejudice is that it prefers us to grow and change in a linear progressist way, by addition, accretion, summation, not by dramatic reversals, except in the most extraordinary and regrettable circumstances.
The success model, the trajectory of a person's career, very much aims for momentum, linear progress, increased status and wealth. Reverses are tolerated as conditions to be overcome, as checkers on our checkered path, but they are not viewed as the heart of growth. And this is a comforting illusion, but when we wear these blinders, we don't readily experience the alternating rhythms of life.
In part this bogs us down, despite success. Change through reversal is to be feared and avoided, so when reversal starts to manifest we experience uneasiness, vigilance, anxiety. We push this unwelcome change away and don't explore or credit its creative power. Most therapies, spiritual disciplines and personal growth systems collaborate in softening the drama by making plot secondary to character, emphasizing personality, motivation, self-actualization, ego strength as if they were independent of the deeds we did and the choices we made.
But you can't avoid reversal without aborting the turning process itself. So the culture keeps us from knowing ourselves. It puts the focus on how we are seen by others or how we fit into the norms.
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Copyright 1999 - Ira Rosenberg
Last Updated 08/23/99 (rge)