The healthy price of growth
Posted on: September 27, 2008Although you may not realize it at the time, the healthy price of growing as a person is leaving old friends — even family — behind. It's like this: you're getting your life off the ground, doing wonderful things, hopefully making people (new and familiar to your life) happy. But some of those fellow humans you know… aren't going to grow with you. They may oppose your deep beliefs (which you weren't born with), or it may have to do with more superficial matters.
It doesn't just happen after high school or college. You could be having a mid-life crisis and decide to invent yourself. You could be starting a new business venture, or taking an existing business in a way that longtime, close friends don't agree with (as maverick billionaire Richard Branson experienced).
It's okay. Don't worry. It's good to reach out to people, extend a helping hand, and encourage them to grow. But just like you're not going to have a bountiful harvest season by screaming at maize and strangling wheat, your friends need to grow themselves to stay close. If that's what they want. Or need.
You'll make new friends, too. Keep being friendly.
I look back to photos of and what I wrote 3-4 years ago, and while I know it's me, it seems like such a different person. The more of me is still very optimistic, yet I have finesse, confidence, and experience I didn't foresee. That's because I've changed. There's no growth sans change, and a zest for life may very well have growth spurts which are turbulent and erratic at the time, yet settle down in the longer view of things.
I've grown apart from friends because they were happy where they were, and I wasn't. I moved away, physically, mentally, *-ly. Looking back, I'm not the slightest bit sad — we each make our choices, and joy once felt, rings forever true.
Cherish those memories, and keep growing.
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September 27th, 2008 at 7:57 PM PDT
Agreed 100%. This is a subject I think about a lot lately, because I'm moving to England now that Kisa and I are married and MOST people around me can't understand it and aren't very supportive. It's been many nights of soul searching and feeling like I have to pick, until one night I realized that I was lucky to be in a position to pick anything at all. Since then, I've made peace with it. My life is my own.
September 28th, 2008 at 6:56 AM PDT
@Thaumata: All the best on your "move for love" (I wish that rhymes), and congrats again on your marriage with Kisa! I moved myself to be with Ravenelle, and while it wasn't as far (Canada to US), travel makes me anxious (yet oddly excited).
It's like something else I've said: "If they don't listen to you, find someone else who will." Conflict never outweighs joy in a healthy relationship.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:35 AM PDT
This post and The Watermelon Dance mean a great deal to me. Never before has there been so much time to connect to self as now. The time for raising family and reaching out to give helping hands with web-site building has past. Now there is just being. Your abundance of words and enthusiasm makes it much easier and enjoyable to leave behind the days of old plus the doubt of friends who find my venture into Second Life a bit weird. Unlike for you words find a way to hide from me. Like my father said "Words go in one eye and out the other." The ears don't work much better.
You excite an unimaginative personality and spur the desire to keep trying.
Accept my thanks and appreciation.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:41 AM PDT
PS………Learned to setup an slurl
http://snurl.com/3ss35
Thanks in order again!
September 28th, 2008 at 5:47 PM PDT
That could have been me saying that Torley, Thaumata (congrats!), and 2B Aeon! I have seen a lot of turnover in friends, locations and work in my life, and I don't regret any of the decisions I've made to get where I am today. The friends I've retained are friends forever no matter what happens, and they are gold. Change is the only constant: no matter how seductive the status quo is, we should embrace it, because with change, good or bad, comes growth.