The Pursuit of Flourishing

Unfettered growth is not good for us

Photo by Pexels from pixabay on Canva Pro.

It seems as if everything around us is measured in growth.

And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, if our children did not grow in a given year, we would be concerned about their health. If the plants in our yard never bloomed in the spring, we would worry that something had killed them over the winter. If our institutions never saw new people coming through the door, we would fear the eventual death of the institution.

But when everything around us seems focused on how much growth is happening, we’re never given the chance to be still and evaluate whether or not growth is really necessary or even good in a given situation.

During the six years we lived in Houston, we saw constant growth. We were there when the newest corridor of the Grand Parkway opened up to drivers, a third loop around the entire Houston metro area. When it is finished, it will be nearly 170 miles long. We watched the constant addition of new neighborhoods, shopping centers, and apartment complexes as the city continued its expansion outward. And while it was good for the economy, the increasing concrete jungle made for more flooding, more traffic, and more pollution. The constant growth of the fourth-largest city in the country was a double-edged sword, and often that edge was leaving more cuts than not.

Everything about our lives seems to be measured by how much we’ve grown. We’re told that we always have to make more money, achieve new goals, and pursue self-improvement. We aren’t supposed to be content with our situation because contentment might lead to stagnation which might lead to some kind of decline. Growth, any kind of growth, is the preferred life model.

And the same is true outside of our personal lives. We’re told that the economy isn’t doing well if businesses aren’t making more money quarter after quarter or if the stock market isn’t going up. Colleges are struggling if they aren’t getting more applicants than they did the year before. Churches are stagnant if they aren’t growing in number. Cities are in trouble if the population isn’t steadily increasing over time.

And sometimes, all of the above is true. But sometimes, that emphasis on growth causes us to focus on the wrong things.

Individuals can be so intent on their own success that they step on top of and over others to get there, forgetting the people who lifted them up along the way. They can be so focused on the metrics (the number of followers, the salary increase, the connections with “important” people) that they don’t realize what they have sacrificed along the way until it is too late.

Institutions can be so focused on getting bigger that significant power gets concentrated on the top, so that the very people responsible for keeping the institution viable are left behind in an endless race of bigger and better. They can be so focused on the next big project that they don’t take the time to nurture the projects that they’ve already launched.

And this constant hustle culture is running us all ragged. It’s creating a distrust in our institutions. It’s pushing us further into our silos as we rely less on each other and more on what will help us reach the next level.

I’m guilty of this too. As someone who grew up with little money, I make a lot of “when we are making this much money” bargains, only to discover that pay raises and job changes may adjust our bank account, only to admit that old habits die hard. As a writer, I’ve watched subscriber and follower numbers and blog post stats like a hawk, convinced if I could get to some arbitrary number that would mean that I had “made it,” succumbing to gimmicks that led to either meaningless numbers or no growth at all.¹ As a teacher at private schools, I’ve watched student numbers go up or down, making judgment calls on administrative decisions or the state of the institution as a result. As a church member, I’ve watched numbers go up and down in congregations, judging the spiritual health of the body by how show up to church on a Sunday morning.

When we think about the role of growth in our lives, we could learn some important lessons from nature. We all want to see plants blooming in our yards and parks, but flowers and trees aren’t the only things that grow in nature. Now that we’re back in Indiana, I’m remembering just how much I hate the thistles that thrive in the soil here. I pull them up and it seems like two come back in their place. When left to their own devices, they grow thick and tall, crowding out the beauty and puncturing the skin of anyone who tries to pull them away from their deep roots. When we do nothing about thistles, they prevent the flourishing of beautiful plants in our gardens. We must stop the growth of one thing so that something better can bloom.

Maybe instead of growth, we should spend more time nurturing what is in our care. A focus on always seeking more or bigger or better can be destructive. When cities focus on growth instead of nurturing the communities already present, they rush to put up new housing and shopping without careful city planning that puts people in harmony with each other and their environment. When businesses focus on growing their bottom line, they don’t stop to consider the employees that are essential for that business growth, often having to spend more time and money to replace those who get burned out or who decide to go somewhere else that will care more for their well-being. When churches focus on growing membership, they often forget to focus on relationship-building and nurturing the faith of people who are already members.

What if we replaced growing with flourishing?

Moving away from growth does not mean that we seek to be stagnant or to stop developing as human beings or society. Instead, we shift our focus to contributing to the flourishing of ourselves, our fellow human beings, and our communities. Growth is a natural output of flourishing, but instead of just focusing up, it moves up and out, positively impacting everyone and everything that is touched in the process.

That is where I want to start the conversation in 2024, as we look to a consequential election and all of the noise that is likely to fill our airwaves this year. I want us to ask what we are doing to flourish, individually and as a collective. Are we tending gardens or letting them become overrun with weeds?

The answer to that question may just determine our future.

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1. There was a period in 2021 when I was convinced that participating in Facebook blog groups would transform my numbers, only to discover that those views didn’t translate into actual readers or community growth.