Growth Doesn't Come From Tribalism

Life, at its core, is about growth. Everything in nature strives toward it—plants reach for the sun, rivers carve valleys deeper over time, and our own bodies are in a constant cycle of adaptation. To grow is to live fully; to stop growing is, in many ways, to begin dying. Growth keeps us curious, alive, and connected to possibility.

But humans are animals, and as animals we have instincts that don’t always serve this higher purpose. One of the strongest is tribalism. For most of history, survival depended on sticking with the group—people who looked like us, thought like us, and moved through the world in similar ways. Safety came from sameness. That instinct hasn’t left us. In fact, in today’s world of social media and globalized outrage, it’s only amplified. Algorithms feed us what we already believe. Extremist movements thrive on “us versus them.” And we often confuse agreement with connection.

The problem is, surrounding ourselves only with people who mirror us—our beliefs, our status, our worldview—doesn’t make us better. It keeps us the same. Growth doesn’t happen in echo chambers.

Real growth happens in friction. It happens when we sit with people who challenge us, who see the world through a completely different lens. It happens when we meet someone who is smarter than us, stronger than us, or simply different than us. Sometimes the lesson is in what we agree with, but more often it’s in how we respond to disagreement—do we dismiss it, or do we let it sharpen us?

Discomfort is the soil of transformation. Just like the body grows stronger under resistance, the mind and spirit grow when tested by difference. The people who stretch us—by their example, by their disagreement, or even by showing us a way we don’t want to live—are the people who remind us that life is about moving forward, not staying stuck.

So if growth is what life is about, then we should seek out not just those who comfort us, but those who stretch us. It’s not always easy. But it’s always human.