Growth

Recently submitted to Union's Study Abroad Journal:

Working in the NGO sector you hear much discussion regarding the value of vague intangible terms. Broadened horizons. Expanded perspective. Global citizenship. The merits of altruism. Personal growth through sacrifice of the same nature.

These terms are thrown about haphazardly. What are my horizons, and what are they being broadened to encompass? What’s wrong with my current perspective, why the expansion? What exactly am I growing into, personally? Individuals irrefutably return from service work larger in some abstract sense; let’s try to ground these abstractions.

First, it should be stated that the expansion of perspectives etc. ad nauseam hurts, the psycho-spiritual equivalent of some serious growing pains. The most difficult part of these pains, and the very root of the most severe pangs of culture shock, is the realization that certain actions, values, emotions that we imagined as inherently human are merely culture-specific. All the goose-bump stimulating beauty of that perfect combination of musical notes, the careful brushstrokes of a brilliant artist, the beautiful and moving intricacies of a novel, the happiness exuded by a radiant smile, all the things that strike a deep resonant note in your being; this note resonates so strong partly because we feel we’ve stumbled across some universally recognized essence that transcends all barriers between us. It is an essence we take as the root of our humanity, and we expect others to recognize it as such.

We all know the disappointment felt when, after showing a close friend something you find tear jerkingly fantastic, and even after he tries hard to share that transcendence of experience, he can only shrug his shoulders and apologize. Real culture shock is when you’re surrounded by such apparent apathy for what you perceive as the root of our common humanity. Realizing that what you envisioned as distinctly human is not so, rather ensconced within your own culture’s hidden walls, is real culture shock, and the first step in personal experiential growth.

This growth blooms concurrent with the waning of culture shock when you realize that these aspects of our culture that we identify as universally appealing are merely surface level extrapolations of the genuinely universal qualities. Friendship. Compassion. Beauty. Love. Altruism. These are the real qualities that are the essence of humanity, we just mistake our attempts at conveying them for the qualities itself. The song, the novel, the painting, the smile, are all culture-specific vehicles for these qualities that we mistake as the qualities themselves. The qualities are there aplenty; it is the release from our restrictive mode of thinking and the subsequent deeper investigation of what you have heretofore viewed through a lens crafted by personal culture that allows you to recognize that the qualities themselves are indeed ubiquitous.

That’s real growth.