The price of progress is death

Nature is cruel. For something to grow, something else must wither. For something to come to life, something else must die. In nature, growth requires destruction. Life requires death. 

As in nature, so in psyche. Part of us can’t grow unless another part dies. To become what we want to become, part of what we are must cease to exist.

I want to hold on to what I have—to what I am. I worked hard to make myself what I am. But to become what I want to be what I am must die. I must step away from the comfort of being what I know and into the discomfort of being what I don’t know.

I want to change, but I want to change without letting go of what I have—and that’s not going to work. I’m fighting to hold on—to keep from changing—while struggling to change. It doesn’t seem to work.

I don’t want to let go of what I am. But equally valid: what I am does not want to let go of me. It worked hard to come into existence and to gain control. It does not want to die any more than I want to kill it.

But die it must, and kill it I must.

Growth requires sacrifice. I must embrace the loss that is the necessary price for the gain.

I want to write, but I keep trying to do it without sacrifice. It’s clear that I have to sacrifice the time that I spend in other, more diverting pastimes. I accept that sacrifice. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

Whatever I produce will be less than what I dreamed of producing. And so the dream must die.

The person I am can’t do the job I want it to do. So it must die as well.

The person I create in its place is likely to be unable as well. I don’t know how to create that person. It will be better than I was, but inadequate to the task. And so I must kill it and create something better.

I must start with a self that is competent in some ways, incompetent in ways in which I need it to become competent. I must kill it and replace that self with another that is differently incompetent. Then I must kill it as well. Holding on to any self—or letting it hold on to me—will lead to failure.

There is no easy road to success. There are roads that are not easy--but not too difficult. But those get you to success slowly. If ever.

Every path requires some sacrifice. The direct path requires more.

That kind of sacrifice is painful—more painful if you resist it.

To sacrifice willingly, knowingly, even happily is the path to change.
[Edited]

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