Shayna Walia
As winter settles in, the world slows to a slumber. However, members of Singapore Medical Society of the UK (SMSUK) have kept busy with recent trips to York, where grand architecture and great food awaited us. In London, members attended a riveting performance of Hamilton. Concluding our first term in the UK, we enjoyed colder weather as temperatures dropped and frost set in, while finding warmth in each other's company.
In one of the Celtic roots of Samhain*, the Cailleach, a divine being, settles her shawl over the land to let it rest, marking darker winter days. Even as we all are urged to rest, this life does not wait for us. I resist the urge to sink into familiarity and repetition, as I ponder how I have grown over the last few months. In this winter edition of Letters from the UK, Charlene shares with us how she defines and views personal growth.
*The Celtic festival that is associated with Halloween.
Charlene Kok
I never really believed in a God, nor did I have a role model growing up, so I never got to learn about the right way to live, if there ever was one. Growing up, I often said that I want to become a better person – which I thought was a self-actualising method, but the truth was I did not know what being a better person meant either. All I knew was that it stemmed from a desire to resolve the disconnect between being proud of who I have become and the struggle to accept who I am. I have since stopped saying that I want to be better, because in that space lies a lot of intention and willingness to be better, but not much on what "better" meant.
What being better means
I struggled with containing the concept of growth in resolutions or goals because there are so many versions of myself that I wish I could have become. Although these thoughts were not haunting, having asymptotes that you can never quite reach makes it seem like growth was not achieved. Is it still progress if you took three steps forward and four steps back? Or if you encountered hardships in life and think to yourself, "I'll be a better person next time", only to fall back into old habits when the next time rolls around? It was a lot easier to feel confident in growth when they existed as definite yardsticks to measure myself against, like scoring well in examinations. However, as I fill more roles and set out to meet more expectations in life, quantifying my performance feels much more unclear.
There is a moment in the television series Loki, where Loki suggests to Thor that it may be better if they part ways and, to his surprise, Thor agrees. In the movies, Loki has always acted out in desperate attempts for attention and love, but instead of offering reassurance as he always did, Thor replies that he was tired and ready to move on if Loki refuses to even try. Here, Loki realises that the only thing stopping him from being loved was himself, and he made a change. The spoiler is that Loki eventually saved the day, and although one act of kindness does not redeem years of harm, it proves that he was truly trying.
To me, personal growth would be understanding the person that I am, who I want to be, and then striving to feel more in tune with that. It is a constant process of learning, unlearning and relearning as I weave in new experiences and versions of myself that I aspire to be, while being compassionate to myself for not being there yet. Personal growth is not obsessing over comparing myself to others while my soul rots inside of me but being unashamed in pursuing things that fulfil me. I have buried my best days in the small, nameless moments that cannot be captured but only experienced, and there is as much value in that as in the big achievements I celebrate.
My honest opinion is that it is difficult for something as intangible as growth to be a concrete goal, without it first dissolving into the meaninglessness of a buzzword. Rather, there is so much more value in understanding the person that you feel rooted in and letting that guide you in the way you choose to live your life. Inevitably, there will always be moments in life that will force you to stop and reconsider if your values are as right as you think they are. Growth accompanies living, and although Jesse Armstrong, director of television series Succession, said that he believes people never change from the core of who they are, he still created four seasons of the show with an entire family of character growth.
Personal journey of growth
Looking back, I think I have grown in the understanding that I am someone who wants to do so much despite how little I am. I have been relentless in pursuing that and intentional in doing it in corners of the world that teach me who I am, where I do not exist in familiarity. I hesitate to say I did it with my best foot forward because I feel like I have so much more to prove, say and live. Our self-portraits do hold a lot of negative space, but I can map the slow buildup of quiet confidence, the different ways I navigate relationships, and having more grace when handling disappointments, to specific parts of my life. Maybe in that, I can say that I have indeed grown.
In the quiet lines of poetry in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, "And all the lives we ever lived / And all the lives to be, / Are full of trees and changing leaves." No matter the path we are on, finding the courage to fall forward and embrace the space between who we are and who we want to become eases the pressure and regret for who we are not yet, making everything feel most beautiful in the present moment. As the 2004 film Troy encapsulates,"The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."