Growth | Artful Balance

I was once in a social circumstance in which I had to daily interact with a group of people who I did not wish to be around but who would promptly re-include me against my wishes whenever I left the group (and voiced I didn't want to continue to be included). So each time I left (five times), I was forcibly invited back.

When I first acquiesced to an "invitation" – after all, I was being asked back by popular demand – I would tell myself I'd interact less, ignore as much as I could, let things go like water off a duck's back.

But ultimately, having to circumscribe oneself to the sidelines just to be able to tolerate a situation is to have to assume a passive, resentful, resistant position. It's incompatible with full-spectrum growth.

So I nixed that idea, and faced the discovery that being likeable in that context was an impossibility. Growth involves a dedication to reality at all costs, which includes speaking one's truth as they can best ascertain it. The implications of this for a social context that I already don't enjoy were not bedazzled with sunshine and sparkles.

"I am not here to be liked" became my private mantra. I decided I value my growth more than being deemed acceptable in the context of a situation I did not choose to be in.

And this, I realized, is the seed of what they call "the art of not giving a fuck."

At first it's empowering, legitimately empowering.

"Since I am not here by choice but coercion, I will be here for only for growth and not conformity: for self-expression, sometimes uncensored; to flex my muscles, exercise my voice, pose thought experiments, test my perspectives."

My final stint there did not survive for long after that. I departed after a personally painful experience became the butt of someone's joke. There's no surprise there – a social dynamic in which a group disrespects boundaries on something as basic as opting out is also a social dynamic where people disrespect boundaries on personally emotionally painful issues.

While "I am not here to be liked" can be a legitimate sign of growth, is also a sign that it's time to move on.