Growing up, there was a part of me that wanted to be what others thought I should be. I’m sure they had some idea of what they wanted (we all do it), but I didn’t want to be it. Inevitably, I would shake off those expectations and pressures and do something else. All of us have that intractable energy inside us to some degree. It’s the life energy. It’s growth.
A good parent wants to see their child fly, even though the child is going to fly some places the parent doesn’t want them to, and take some unadvised risks. The little one is going to go out and have some experiences that are foreign and abhorrent to the parent, and come back “a different person.”
If we’re honest with ourselves, we want to keep others small. We want to keep them inside the bounds and the box where it feels like we can control them. We feel safe, and it feels like they will always be ours. If they change and grow beyond us, that feels scary. We might also feel a little threatened and/or envious. We feel like we need to be doing the same kind of growth ourselves.
The purpose of growing up is to become the thing you were always meant to be, the thing you are programmed in your DNA to be. No one knows what that is. You do not even know – because it has never been before. And we have never been in this moment before. Everything everyone else has done has led up to this moment. That means you are at a jumping off point. You have a responsibility, then, to those upon whose shoulders you stand. But it is not to be like them. (Those people might even be disappointed if you don’t reach your full potential, even if it means becoming the things they didn’t anticipate and don’t even like.)
The purpose of growth is to “move beyond.” If you are not doing that, you are dying. Keep going further. And remember: becoming different is not to be separate from, better than, or contemptuous toward. It is simply to become your full self. When you are fully yourself, it will be easier for you to LOVE EVERYTHING, which is the whole point. You cannot love someone who is controlling you, and you cannot love someone fully until you become fully yourself.