From Achievement to Maturity

For the Boundaries of the Next Generation

Once, at a chapel service, I stood before thousands of students and spoke about dreams. "The future belongs to those who dream," I said. Yet as I said it, I was in fact saying it to myself as well. Now, at the end of this book, I think about what I truly wish to hand down to the next generation. It is not "swell larger." I would like to render that heart in three words: achievement, growth, maturity.

Interestingly, all three of these words carry the character for "to accomplish" (成). But the next character parts the ways. Achievement (成果) carries the character for fruit (果). It is the outcome to be put on display, the output that is measured and compared. Growth (成長) carries the character for length (長). It is growing from within, enlarging together with structure. Maturity (成熟) carries the character for ripening (熟). It is to ripen when the time comes, and to know how to withdraw. The "power to be able not to" of which I spoke in Chapter One bears its fruit here. Not the ability to do anything at all, but the ability to stop and say "no"—that is maturity. The truly strong person Nietzsche portrayed was not one who runs without rest but a person of leisure, moving quietly and slowly, disliking excessive busyness. The one who swells without rest is closer to the "last man" he despised than to any overman. Maturity lies on the side of that slowness. A life whose goal is achievement always looks outward; a life that has reached maturity is aligned within. If growth asks "how far have I come," maturity asks "is this road right for me."

This difference between growth and expansion the educationist Professor Lee Seong-hoe forged into a single sentence for me: "Growth is the widening of the boundary without losing integrity; to grow only outward in form, without integrity, is expansion, and expansion is death." When the inside grows together as the outside widens, it is growth; but when the inside stays the same and only the surface swells, that is expansion toward death. The distinction we have been telling through balloon and tree since Chapter One, he pinpointed precisely in the language of scholarship.

Maturity, I have long thought, is the weight of life shifting from outside to inside. Astonishingly, the historian Toynbee found the same thing across whole civilizations. The true growth he saw was the shifting of power not outward (conquest and expansion) but inward (the power to govern oneself). The psychologist Carl Rogers saw the same thing in a single person. The immature person always keeps the measuring stick outside—how will others see me. In the mature person that measuring stick moves inward, and one judges by the sense of one's own heart. The historian and the psychologist, each from his own place, arrived at the same truth I had seen. Maturity is the state in which the weight of life has at last shifted from outside to inside and settled there.

But here we must return to the question this book has deferred longest. Recall the swelling we saw in Chapter One. That person who only swelled was afraid to give his best. Terrified of real failure, he hoarded his best and only swelled. So how do we turn him from swelling back toward growing? The answer is, unexpectedly, paradoxical. Only by giving your best can you finally know your own boundary.

A boundary is knowing how far I extend. But the person who has not given his best never comes to know his own boundary. Because he keeps himself within the infinite possibility of "I could have done well if I'd tried," he can never know how far he actually extends. Not knowing his boundary, he does not know the direction in which to grow. He merely swells in every direction. Expansion is the growth-imitation of one who does not know his own boundary. Conversely, only the person who has given his best touches his own boundary. So this is as far as I go. This wall is who I am now. Only the one who has struck that wall can, from that very spot, take one step further. Just as in Chapter Five the muscle thickened at the spot where it was stimulated, a person grows at the spot where he strikes his own boundary.

A verified, finite failure is always more alive than an unverified, infinite possibility.

And so what we must release is a single sentence: "If only I had given my best back then……." The moment we set down this alibi, the true sentence arrives: "I gave my best. And that is enough." This is the arrival point of maturity, and another name for the 安息 we met in Chapter Ten. The place where, having given your best, you can at last say "enough"—the place of 息.

Now I think of the next generation. What I wish to hand down to them is not the encouragement to swell larger. It is an invitation to give their best and touch their own boundary. To be wounded at that boundary, to grow from that wound, to share that growth, and, having given all, to rest. To grow, not swell. To be born within relationship, not to stand alone. That is the boundary I wish to hand down to the next generation.

References

Arnold Toynbee (etherialization) · Carl Rogers (internal locus of evaluation) · Carl Jung (individuation) · Friedrich Nietzsche (the last man)