The Importance of Struggle in Growth

I’ve been listening to an audio-book title Range by David Epstein. The book talks a lot about something that I already expressed in a previous post (On Specialization). Needless to say I highly recommend this book for anyone who is in the education system, professionals, and parents. It is very insightful with the process of how the human mind likes to learn, in contrast to how society (the American education system specifically) wants us to learn.

I still think about the ever-present hostility between generational thinking in the old vs. the young. One side has the experiences of the past that can be used to try to control the events of the future. The other side substitutes these first-hand experiences for a summary of what they missed out on, and then have the blank slate to do something completely new that has not been seen before.

This starts in infancy. Infants are required to learn about their surroundings in order to grow. If infants were to crawl around exploring without limits, the possibility of harm is quite large. This is why humans care about their young as opposed to (according to National Geographic) bears, felines, canids, primates, many species of rodents, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds have been spotted eating their own young. Not saying it is a common occurrence, but it is surprisingly a bit more frequent than uncommon.

Tangent aside, when a baby grows to be a preschooler they can either act independently and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about trying to do anything independent. It’s the beginnings of a neural network. This is where preferences start to develop, and where they can either start thinking and acting for themselves, or the coddling (or regimens) of parents start to have a lasting effect. Psychologically speaking, according to Erik Erikson’s theory of development (to which this example is in the third stage for those keeping score at home), the preschooler should attempt “projects” that they can reasonably accomplish, while having the parents make this as safe for the child (and society if it is meddlesome for other people). It is not wise for a parent to downright discourage any independent behavior outright. Hopefully this is common sense.

This is where struggle kicks in, as it is inevitable that preschoolers make mistakes. This is because they’re blind to how things work in “the real world”. Adults know that if you open a bottle of syrup over your lap, you will get very sticky. So here, darling, let me show you to put it over your plate over your PAC-MAN pancakes.

This seems obvious at first, but parenting becomes very hard at the teenage level. There are many outside influences that affects the youth’s thinking. The harmless lights and bland noise of children’s television can now be properly consumed pieces of art, like Stranger Things, The Simpsons, and Rick and Morty.

As one grows older, lessons learned become more nuanced and personal. This does not stop.

Some may have scoffed at my choices of “art” that I used above, but this is where the divide comes in. It is important to know that age is only a factor when comparing how people have different opinions about whether a piece of art is “good” or “bad” (gender is another big one, for example). Yet beyond the surface of most modern media there is a deeper message that one can take out of it, even if it is via parody or satire (which can often become crude or obscene).

If you were to ask a parent “Would you rather have your (grand)child grow up to be a doctor or a waitress?”, it’d be pretty hard for a parent to say the latter. This is likely due to our economic system valuing the work of doctors higher than the work of a waitress. It makes sense, then to teach impressionable children a foundation for succeeding in primary, secondary, and post-secondary.

4.0 or bust. You’re going to be a doctor because you are smart.

Academia itself does not teach you how to be a good doctor. It may teach you advanced anatomy, physiology, and even procedural knowledge so that you can be a competent doctor. Academia teaches competence, but little else. Some even go to college primarily for a social experience. I had the privilege of going to college too, and I liked studying the material and researching. When I went to get a job outside of school, I quickly learned my line of work was not competence-based as much as I hoped. I had adopted the parent-friendly idea that grades and studying for these competencies was vital to future success, yet I had reached a crossroads and decided that the knowledge I had accrued in school served little purpose in having a happy life. After self-evaluating I found what I was good at, and pursued that.

Parents use economics to raise children. Children need to raise themselves.

Both of these are natural and clash. This is a big part as to why diversity (when both parties are malleable to change) is very important for combined growth and satisfaction, and we can finally talk about struggle.

It is important to struggle because to struggle is to learn through your own process and volition.

A parent sees a struggling child and instinctively wants to help. Like most of our human instincts they are intuitive, that is they make logical sense. The more intuitive a system is, the m
ore likely it is flawed. The intuition for a parent to keep their child clean makes sense in the case of injury in the wild, but not syrupy shorts. I’m not saying let your kid pour syrup on their shorts, but instead to make it easy for the child to pour his/her own syrup, or to not discourage the fact that they wanted to learn how containers work by punishing them for touching the thing.

Apathy is the enemy.

Being indifferent, from the parent or child, is essentially turning off a potential avenue for exploration and growth. While there are aspects in life that serve no higher purpose on an individual level that we must yet participate in due to the fabric of society (jury duty, middle school, traffic jams), some simply live with jobs and goals that do not match their true self. Most would not even think to try to expand their horizons creatively, and instead consume what is in front of them and do little else. This is comfortable and is the nice default setting of “path of least resistance”

Sound familiar?

Opposition is exciting! Overcoming what you didn’t think was possible is rewarding! These are also pre-programmed into your brain, ready to be harnessed. Humans are also social creatures. You can go out and learn from the experiences of the old while also maintaining upkeep of your personal, well-maintained, and personalized idea generating machine.