Growth Changes What We Accept

For a long time, I felt that there would be a sort of obviousness to growth - a sense of achievement when I have done something bigger or bolder or braver than I ever thought I could. When I accomplish something hard, or finally do something I'm justly confident in, it's easy to see and be glad of the progression. We can all name the victories and successes and experiences that made us who we are, and the places in our lives that we've grown from. But I think some of the most powerful growth happens in smaller, subtler ways. Things don't always announce their presence as changes, and it takes longer to recognize the ways we've acted or reacted differently than we perhaps have before.

Sometimes it's in conversation. You've talked with someone before, possibly in the same way, possibly with similar topics, maybe even similar disagreements or complaints and explanations that were just accepted because, well, we have to accept them. There isn't much we can do about it, really, and certainly nothing we can do right then and there. And yet, in the same way as before, you listen to what this person has to say to you this time, and you realize something different. Maybe you see something clearly that you hadn't before, or something you've seen for a long time but hadn't understood until this moment or this conversation. Maybe you're not defensive, or you feel like you don't have to be this time, and you leave with a sense of accomplishment but without needing to explain yourself or apologize or confront someone about something. Nothing has really changed your life, and nothing really happened differently. There's no confrontation, no speech, no grand gesture. It was all small, and perhaps you didn't even realize it until several days passed, because it seems obvious now that it hadn't been before, and you can hardly imagine it not having been. This, to me, is one of the surest signs of growth - not just the things you've been able to do or achieve or experience, but the things you're no longer willing to accept or tolerate.

Growth changes our understanding of what we accept and what we tolerate, and what we demand and expect from those around us, and of ourselves. It tells us that certain things are unacceptable in particular contexts, that certain behaviors are just wrong or harmful even if they aren't illegal or even particularly unusual. It shows us that we deserve certain things, even if those things aren't particularly common. It doesn't make things right that were previously wrong, exactly, but it helps us see those things for what they are, which can in turn help us avoid them in the future.

I think most of us, at some point, learn to accept certain behaviors based on the people we're around without realizing that it's out of our control or that it's because we don't have a lot of other examples to go by. We learn to associate certain behaviors with love or hate or loyalty or forgiveness or productivity, depending on who we're learning them from, and we grow up thinking that that's what those things are. If love isn't shown consistently, we learn to work for it. If forgiveness only comes when someone else has achieved something else, we think that's what we're owed too. If peace is only something we can have when everyone else is satisfied, we don't think it's worth pursuing any other way. And these lessons, these associations and expectations that we learn from those around us, don't stay in childhood. They follow us into adulthood, friendships, workplaces, relationships, parenting, and the conversations we have with ourselves. We may grow up to believe that being disrespected is the price we pay for honesty, or that speaking up is selfish or unnecessary. We learn to sacrifice sleep and time to be productive and then feel guilty if we want to stop and rest ourselves. We learn to give chances even after someone stops deserving them because we think forgiveness requires endless access. None of it may seem like a choice when we make it, but it all stays with us and helps shape how we view everything else we do.

This is something I think is particularly powerful about growth being a process. It can take a long time to learn new associations and new expectations and to unlearn damaging ones. It may also take time to learn how to act differently, to behave differently, to speak differently. Awareness may come first, but it doesn't always bring freedom - not right away, and not always completely. It can come with the same uncertainty and fear and confusion and grief as any other change, and it can take even longer still to understand how this new awareness is meant to change what we do.

In the meantime, we may appear to be different people to those who used to know us, which can be difficult. Those who were previously comfortable with us may find themselves less so with this new, pricklier version. It can be harder to stay close to people when they're unwilling to change or accept change, and even those who care about us may not understand why we're upset about something we previously didn't mind. It can feel, in the short term, like we made everything worse instead of better, because the rules seem to have changed without notice. We may be more willing to forgive others and ourselves for the same things, even as those around us are confused by our new expectations and what we're willing to stand for. In many ways, it feels like the rules were always different for us, even if it took us a while to recognize it.

I think that's part of why growth tends to affect relationships, because it often changes the sorts of things we're willing to tolerate or accept. If you grow to accept less from someone, or demand more of them, you'll inevitably grow further away from them. If you grow to expect and demand more from someone, you'll also inevitably change how much you're letting them contribute to your life, because you're growing to value other things. There may be relationships that seem to change with you, that grow with you and change just enough so that you're both happier and better people. There may also be relationships that actively resist every change, because they're dependent on one or both parties, putting more into it than they take out. Growth does make us more aware of the things we sacrifice for others and how much we're putting into a relationship, but it doesn't always tell us which things we ought to sacrifice.

Part of the grieving process, to some degree, is about mourning the relationships we could have had. We talk about growth as if it's universally positive, but you can feel like you're losing something too when you grow. You can grieve for the person you used to be, or the apology you thought you were owed that you're starting to realize you weren't ever going to get. You can grieve for the relationships that used to be there and the parts of yourself you had to leave behind because it wasn't worth keeping either of you in the same place. You can feel a kind of fondness for the version of yourself you used to be, even as you're grateful to be growing, because that person knew how to survive without sacrificing so much to everyone else. It's not wrong to want to move forward, and it's also not wrong to mourn what you had to leave behind.

I think that's probably one of the reasons, in turn, why growth rarely holds judgment against who we used to be. We did what we could with what we had, and we made the best decisions we knew at the time. We grew up, learned what we knew from those around us, and used it to understand the things we could. We did the best we could for ourselves, even if that meant compromising, and we did the best we could for others even when it hurt us to do so. We were kind to others in the ways we knew, and we were kind to ourselves in the ways we thought we deserved.

It's not wrong to be kinder to ourselves now that we understand something better, but it's also not wrong to want to be able to say we did the right thing at the time. We can recognize we did what we could with what we had, and we can also recognize that now we have something better, we ought to use it. We can outgrow things but without shame, and we can forgive others and ourselves for things we could not change at the time

When we start to grow in new ways, so do our definitions for certain things. Kindness stops being something we have to give to others when we don't want it for ourselves, and courage stops being something we can only do when we're not afraid. Forgiveness stops being the refusal to acknowledge others' faults and starts being the ability to acknowledge them and move on regardless. Loyalty is no longer just about being there for people even when it hurts us, and peace stops being about not having disagreements and starts being about having the honesty to have them and then having the bravery to resolve them. Love itself, as a concept, grows to mean less about the things we can endure and more about the things we can create with someone else that let us thrive. It's not right to lose the things we used to believe, but it's also not wrong to move on to something better.

It takes time for all of this to change, and it can be hard to understand that we've grown when it doesn't all happen at once. We can set boundaries and then feel guilty about having done so, or we can feel guilt when we shouldn't and then be angry with ourselves for feeling that way. We can be better people in some ways and then fall back into the same old patterns, and we can be brave in some situations while being cowardly in others. It can be difficult to recognize growth, but it's usually easiest to see in the way we start to change who we spend time with, and the way we start to treat ourselves and others. We don't confuse constant availability with friendship or constant sacrifices with love. We don't put as much stock in promises and empty words as we used to, and we hold ourselves and others to higher standards when it comes to behavior. We can learn to value our own honesty and accountability. We can learn to value what we're owed instead of what we're willing to give. We learn to grow as we become conscious of the ways we used to be, little by little and day by day.

Perhaps that's another part of why it's hard to see growth as it happens. It's less like a lightswitch being turned on and more like the slow change of seasons, until you wake up one day and realize that something has changed about the way you see the world. Some things still feel the same, but others have shifted subtly, and you're suddenly aware that you're in a different place. It's easier to feel pride in what you've accomplished, because it's right there and obvious in the things you can point to and change and recognize. But when it comes to the smaller ways you've acted differently, it's easier to feel as though nothing has changed at all. You've been a little nicer to people you used to be mean to. You've stopped tolerating things that used to irritate you, and now you're in a place where you're just a little prouder of who you are. You've stopped tolerating things that used to irritate you, and now you're in a place where you're just a little prouder of who you are. You've made choices that have made you who you are, and you've grown to demand better things from yourself.

Growth makes us better in more ways than most of us think. It doesn't make us perfect, and it doesn't make us immune to all our faults, but it lets us understand those faults and move on from them. It teaches us to change the things we can, to recognize the things we can't, and to know the difference between these two things. Some of the most important parts of being better are simply knowing when you were already good enough and when you deserve to be better and making sure the changes you make are actually ones that improve your life. It's important not to be better at everything, but it's important to be better at the things that matter most. Growth makes us more conscious of the things that matter most.