“People who are comfortable remaining stagnant will always say, “You’ve changed”. The cycle of life is meant to include growth and transformation. Do not allow those who are stuck in a rut make you feel like less, just for blooming."
Each human life is incredibly different. This includes what we have access to and our own wants and dreams. With these differences in mind, we should never assume that we are better than another person because we have experienced more, or in our own opinion, have “grown” more than another. Some of us may find immense gratitude and satisfaction in a more simplistic life; with a career we enjoy and a partner we love. Others may find this way of life unfitting to their desires, and so they choose to walk a different path. No one person is better than the other because of these wants, only different.
While we should appreciate these differences in those we love, this definitely does not mean that we should spend our life with someone who does not support that growth in us. It also does not mean that we can try to help budge and move that person so that they can grow to be similar or love similar things as we do. We can only do so much to guide and expose someone before we must accept that some people are simply comfortable where they are. They have played their role in our lives and they cannot journey with us anymore.
We try to keep our bond with them going strong. We offer them opportunities to learn what we are and to try something new. We do this to almost train them into developing similar dreams as ours. To maybe help them realize why we want to adopt that child or why we desire so badly to go on that service trip every summer. We want to shake them and warn them “We are drifting apart, please try this for me”, but we know that love does not force. Love is natural.
We question whether we really want to keep moving down the path we are on. We second-guess our dreams. We wonder if we really need to go on that trip abroad for that long. We know what experiences are going to change us for the better. The scary part of this growth is that we also know that these experiences might change us into someone they will no longer be in love with, or into someone that will no longer be in love with them.
I do believe that love requires sacrifice in certain aspects, and sometimes in order to make a relationship succeed you will need to both accommodate and alter some of your plans. But we must know where the line is drawn. When is the sacrifice becoming so great that it is holding us back from growing into the person we want to be?