COMMENTS:
not with the pants i am wearing
by ABC on Wed Sep 08, 04 4:24pm
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I can't wait until Paris Hilton gets her inheritance. By God, she deserves it.
I think that growth is aquired thorugh adversity. Either it "makes" or "breaks" you. Maybe a person can grow without having to go through hardships, it might just take a little longer. :) Good one Cathexis!
I dont know, but unfortunatly things are learned best the hard way.
by ABC on Wed Sep 08, 04 4:28pm
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They do seem to go hand in hand. I might be inclined to agree with this if I hadn't had a friend once who was an exception to this rule; it was refreshing.
Also consider that many who suffer merely grow weak and bitter. So while suffering and pain are useful tools, I don't think they are required to grow. They can force one's strength to develop sooner, though.
I think loss and suffering has made me a more mature, empathic person. However, I think too much suffering can make one bitter and might reverse the process.
Great question (as usual).
by mojo on Wed Sep 08, 04 5:00pm
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It's hard to say. Since I have experienced a lot of pain & loss, I know it has helped me grow. Boy, do I have character! But I don't know how I would be without the suffering I've had - I wish I could see it from both sides...
Experiences make people grow. A person without any experiences, as you say, is like a child.
Maybe something more important than whether or not a given experience is positive or negative is what we DO with them. If your way of thinking and perceiving the world is distorted in any way, which is true for most people (in many different ways), then you might do something like discount a positive experience, so that it has less of an impact on your character, or even a negative one. If you have a negative experience, what effect that has on you depends upon how you interpret it. You might dwell on it, blow it out of proportion, consider it an indictment of the context in which it happened, or anything else which is otherwise unhealthy, mentally. Or it could be a wake-up call, an insight into something which you never would have gotten otherwise. Most people probably aren't even conscious of how they interpret their experiences. That's one of the theories for dreams - sorting out your recent experiences. If you never sort out an experience like suffering, then I think that stunts your growth.
And, of course, it depends upon the nature of the experience.
One must experience life in order to grow with wisdom and empathy.
Unfortunately some people become corrupted more by greed over many years and become very unempathetic to the needs of people around them.
Some people suffer but don't grow. Many others suffer and claim to grow but really haven't improved at all.
Unlikely. Or at least not as much as those who suffer and learn from it.
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