peaceful chaos

I’ll be inquisitive today and wonder about you, the reader. if you are reading this because you feel like you are growing and aren’t enjoying it, or because you are motivated to grow and wonder what’s coming… well, here’s my two pence.

growth is something that personally sits at the top of my mental dialogue on a very regular basis, and why? maybe it was my parents pushing me in school, maybe it’s my competitive nature, or maybe it’s my desire for more. only I will know the real answer, but I’ll allow you to think and ponder on it if you want to figure it out.

when I think about growth, I think about personal development. now, that can be in so many areas of life. it could be your physical fitness, your mental health, your relationship with your family, your relationship with your friends, or your relationship with yourself. it will always come down to what matters the most to you, or even how many things at one time you can juggle and grow at the same time.

I’m personally of the opinion that when we grow up around our parents and grandparents, we can be shaped by the experiences they go through and how they react. on top of this, they can sometimes almost condition us on how we end up responding.

so if my mum thought that friend at school was mean to me and didn’t deserve me, she would show that and tell me ‘you shouldn’t waste time on people who treat you poorly.’ but because I don’t understand that point yet I haven’t grown to understand that people who treat you bad might not care about you as much as you think so in effect I haven’t learnt that lesson, I won’t see the harm. I haven’t grown to that state of self-understanding yet to sit there and say ‘well helena, you are a b**** and I don’t think we should be friends anymore.’ instead, as a youngster, I’ll wait to see the proof my mother saw and have the mental understanding in place before I act on that feeling.

it’s ironic, isn’t it… if you think about it, someone could tell you a million times that a stove is hot and will burn you if you touch it, but if you don’t believe them or haven’t experienced a burn before, you most likely won’t listen. you want to find out if the stove will really burn you…could that be applied to people?

I (personally) think one of the hardest types of growth is emotional, and that’s for a number of reasons. think about training yourself to build a habit… it takes time, and it’s not in your nature to just do it because your brain is wired a certain way; to build that habit we need to re-wire it.

take that and apply it to more social situations. I mean, we’ve all had that friend we grew up with or met at a point in our lives where everything was just fun and easy. you maybe didn’t have a lot going on in your life that was bad or taxing mentally, or maybe they were a rock for you in a time of hardship. but here’s the sad reality: you don’t grow at the same pace as everyone around you. even if that person grew into someone you don’t like anymore, your brain knows them; it listened to them, it has a catalogue of data on that person. even though they might leave you feeling shitty or constantly chasing them to be a better friend when someone has played a part in your life (big or small) removing them or changing how you view them requires a re-wire. we need to re-train our brains to realise they aren’t that same person anymore.

it can be hard to detach from people, don’t get me wrong, and I think it might be a fairly unspoken about aspect of growth. because while you can meet some incredible people who build you up and help you improve—someone who is also growing and maybe even at a similar pace—it’s hard to not look back and realise that you may outgrow some people.

people come in and out of your life for various reasons. they might’ve been there to help you through a tough time, teach you a lesson, or even just be a passing face that you had some good memories with. it doesn’t mean we should connect any less, but I think it’s worth noting that sometimes losing that connection… you guessed it, can mean you need a re-wire.

it could be that you need to re-wire how you view them, though. maybe they were your best friend once and now someone you just speak to on occasion. maybe they were someone you had a deep emotional connection with and now only talk surface level. it’s okay that it happens, and we can’t be resistant to it when it does, because trust me when I say this… the re-wire can be hard, confusing, and make you question if it can’t just stay the same. but if you stay in a limbo of never quite understanding, I think that will hurt a little more.

this post feels like it developed into an ‘is it better to have loved and lost’ debate, and even if it’s cynical, I quite like it.

I’ve spoken about curiosity and why we should try to be more of it; I’ve spoken about dating and connection and even change and what incentivises it. so maybe this post doesn’t fit the best, but it’s just my writing… into a void… on the internet… that maybe three people read?

but then again, maybe that’s the point. growth isn’t a tidy, linear thing that fits into a perfect post category. it can be a messy, taxing, and draining process of updating your ‘internal catalogue’ while trying not to resent the people who didn’t make it with you on the journey up that mountain you want to climb.

so is it better to have loved and lost? I don’t think anyone will ever have the answer. but what I do think? I think it’s better to grow, re-wire, re-write your life, relationships, and self than to have stayed in the dark just because you are scared.

but hey, what do you think… are you gonna take the plunge?