ALTHOUGH we may not realise it, the sun greets a new version of us every single morning. When we go through the experiences of each day and fall asleep, we never wake up the next morning as the same person we were the night before. Our experiences have a transformative effect on us. We come alive each day with new opinions and new ways of approaching life. This, in fact, is the very essence of being alive. Our ability to wake up in the same world with a new way of seeing it fuels our hope for the future. Eventually, we accept this growth and learn to depend on it to carry us towards a future that we deserve to have.
Yet, growth can be a challenging process at times. Growth can suddenly become a suffocating imposition when you are not given the space for it to take place. It becomes a difficult and unwelcome feeling when you are in an environment that does not accommodate it sufficiently. It can make you feel as though you are swimming in a pool of viscous oil when you desperately need to reach the shore. It can make you feel like a seed that is ready to burst open with life, but has no space for the roots to grow.
When we realise that we are in such a position, our immediate instinct is to remove ourselves from the environment that is not allowing us to grow. Of course, this is a quick and efficient solution. However, this is often the wrong move. By putting ourselves in a new environment to facilitate our growth, we are teaching ourselves to restrict our growth only to environments that are comfortable for us. This means that when we inevitably encounter a situation that we cannot leave nor comfortably grow in, we end up stagnating there. We often fail to teach ourselves resilience and perseverance, so we become stuck living a dissatisfying and unfulfilling life because we simply do not know how to overcome it without the option of escape.
When we are stuck in a dark room, the only obvious way to see light is to leave the room. However, could you imagine how powerful our generation could be if we could become resilient enough to see rainbows even when we are trapped in a dark room? Could you imagine how much change we could bring to the world around us if we thought about creating light in the dark room, rather than seeking it outside? Extricating ourselves from difficult situations may facilitate our growth, but it can never truly give us the power to change the world.
The choice to change the world rarely comes in a noble or attractive package. It is often represented by a path that no one wants to take, fearing they will be trapped in an uncomfortable life. Yet, if we teach ourselves to be strong enough to grow in any situation that we are placed in, we can transform that uncomfortable path into a road that our peers and successors can take to join us in a better world. The seeds that do not wait patiently for comfortable environments and perfect conditions bloom into bright flowers, even when they find themselves in the tiny spaces produced by cracks in concrete roads.
We have not been afforded the gift of being born into a perfect world. We have not been given the privilege of holding a world unshaped and unmarred in our hands. Nevertheless, neither of these facts has made us any less powerful than we can be. Neither of these facts affects the extent of impact we can leave behind in this imperfect world. Real growth does not hesitate and wait for an escape. Instead, it bursts forth through stone and viscous, black oil to become what it is meant to be.
As we continue to grow, most of us will have the opportunity to leave an environment that may be restricting us. Those who choose to leave will likely have a comfortable and peaceful life. However, those who are strong enough to stay will find themselves fighting a noble battle to make their current environment a place that sustains their growth. Perhaps one day, they may wake up and realise during this battle that they have already become the person that they have always wanted to be—and in the process, changed the world as well.