People always talk about how other people have changed, and how they aren’t the same person anymore, but are they really a different person, or are they now just a flower in full bloom?

It obviously happens a lot. Sometimes, people do change, they gain a new perspective on something they never thought they would. One might simply learn something new, and it changes their whole outlook. Perhaps they might even meet someone new, that comes into their lives, and flips the script on everything they’ve been doing. Who knows? All of these and more are possibilities. Something that I wonder, though, is whether or not this is really considered “change”.

Many things in nature undergo what most call “change”. Animals change from little babies to full grown adults. Plants change from seeds to their full grown form. Water changes forms all the time from gas to liquid then to solid and every which way. Heck, even humans have changed a lot since the beginning of time, and obviously recorded history. We don’t merely consider these things change, though. These are all better, and more accurately articulated as examples of growth, or evolution. Some of these transformations take many lifetimes, and others can happen quicker than you can read this short piece I’ve written for you, but either way, they happen.

The reason that I offer these terms to you as more just interpretations for what so many see as change, is because too many make change into a bad thing. Change ends up being ugly, and isn’t recognized as a beautiful possibility. Change scares people.

So forget change. Leave the change for your political aspirations, as well as your cup-holder/ash tray in your car. Think for a second, of other people as flowers.

We enter this world as little more than seeds. We spend years, and years in the dirt, and ground of our lives, growing. We’re watered and fertilized with good and bad advice, and hopefully we pursue the road forward with the former rather than the latter, and we do change, but for the better. We become more and more of ourselves each and every day. All the while, we meet other seeds, or people, and they meet us. What they’ve met, is you before you’ve bloomed.

Sometimes someone might get stuck on whatever they think you are, and if you differ from that cemented thought in their head, they say you’ve changed. You haven’t changed, well, maybe you have, but you haven’t only changed, you’ve grown. Maybe you’re the best version of yourself, and maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re a walking dumpster fire, in the eyes of your “friends” and “family” but that’s OK. Maybe you’re not the person you used to be, but who is? You are who you are, and that’s all you need to be for today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. But today. Maybe someone you met yesterday doesn’t like the person you’ve become today, and maybe another that you’ll meet tomorrow hates who you were today, but what’s important is that you are who you choose to be.

Yeah, maybe they changed, but maybe it’s a change they choose to undergo, and if it makes them happy, maybe we have no right to comment on it. Just because they aren’t who you think they should be, really shouldn’t matter.

Maybe they have changed, and maybe they’re blooming. The beautiful bud that someone becomes might not be for you, maybe you like tulips more than you like roses, but they’re the flower that they are and that’s OK.