we know well enough that we are equipped
with an innate drive for physical growth
that the human animal is geared to keep
developing towards its outward mature
form adding muscle and bone and fatty
tissue in a spontaneous process of
development that begins in our earliest
days in the womb and ends around our
16th year what is less obvious is that
we are marked by an equally innate
equally powerful although here lifelong
drive towards emotional growth without
anything mystical being meant by this
unless we are impeded by internal or
external obstacles we are set on an
inner lockable path towards emotional
development an obvious conceptual
difference between the two drives is
that we can know easily enough what it
means to be fully grown physically but
it's rather harder to pin down what
equivalent emotional maturity might look
like we can hazard a two-fold answer our
emotional drive is made up of two
strands the first is a will towards ever
greater and deeper connection
the second comprises a will towards ever
greater and deeper self-expression to
consider connection first we are marked
by an intense wish to move away from
loneliness shame and isolation and to
find opportunities for understanding
sincerity and communion we long to share
with friends lovers and new
acquaintances an authentic picture of
what it means to be us and at the same
time to enter deeply into their feelings
and experiences what we call love is
merely a subsection of the drive to
connect which extends across a range of
activities and types of relationship
stretching to encompass the body and our
desire for physical intimacy touch and
sexual play we can count ourselves as
emotionally healthy in large measure
according to what degree of connection
we have in our lives
by the drive to self-expression we mean
the desire to fathom bring into focus
and externalize our ideas and creative
and intellectual capacities a drive that
manifests itself particularly around our
work and our aesthetic activities we
seek to gain an ever greater
understanding of the contents of our
minds especially of our values our
pleasures and our way of seeing the
world and to be able to give these a
kind of expression that makes them
public comprehensible and beneficial to
others we will feel that we've had a
rich life whenever we've been able to
give a voice and shape to some of the
many perceptions that cause through us
and in some way
however modestly left a fruitful imprint
on the world these two aspects of the
drive for emotional growth help us to
get a handle on some of our most acute
moments of unhappiness it's because of
the primordial importance of the drive
to connect that it hurts so much when a
friendship is broken off when an
established relationship starts to lack
physical contact or when we can't find
anyone we see eye to eye with in a new
city and it's because of how powerful
the drive to self-expression is that we
suffer so much when our studies fail to
engage our minds when a job ceases to
reflect our interests or when on a
Sunday evening we feel in a confused way
that our talents are going to waste just
as the same drive can explain the
intensity of the envy we'll feel when we
hear of a friend's success in an area
that we aspire to calling this aspect of
human nature a drive and ik waiting it
with that towards physical maturity
emphasizes it's essentially
non-negotiable nature and hence its
power over us it is as misguided painful
and nonsensical to try to stop someone
growing emotionally as it is to bind
their feet the drive takes precedence
over all manner of more convenient
options for longing for respectability
or money or stability it won't leave us
alone until it's been heard it might
make us leave a marriage that would from
many perspectives
have been so much easier to remain in or
to throw in a job that was hugely
convenient financially in order to take
up another that more properly answers
the call of our deep selves if the drive
to emotional growth continues to be
unattended and perhaps even unknown to
us it can short-circuit our whole lives
in a bid to be heard fed up with waiting
it may simply throw us into a paralyzing
depression or lock us into a state of
overwhelming anxiety by breaking us in
these ways the frustrated drive is
trying to be interpreted and
accommodated what it lacks an eloquence
and focus it makes up for in persistence
and strength a break down is a
roundabout attempt to create
opportunities for a breakthrough that is
a new stage of emotional growth by
understanding more clearly how basic and
important the drive to emotional growth
can be we may come to better recognize
the symptoms of its frustrations and the
logic of our longings and at points when
we upset the otherwise steady course of
our lives in its name we can be ready to
explain to ourselves and those who care
for us what might be behind our puzzling
behavior
we haven't forever lost our minds we
recognize the role of respectability and
status we would love to be less
difficult and demanding it's just that
we have to honor another even more vital
side to our nature we are under an inner
imperative to continue on our path
towards emotional growth
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