Are we growing or just getting older? बढ्दै गएको उमेर, उस्तै हामी

  Are We Growing or Just Getting Older?

"Somewhere between growing up and trying to figure our lives out, we started confusing being busy with becoming better."

Life has been one of the easiest among all. Sounds weird, right? Maybe it is. We live, we laugh, we demand, we cry, we roam a lot throughout. We do so many things everyday and at the end of the day, we go to sleep and wake up to do it all again. Sometimes I wonder if we ever stop to think what we are actually doing.

Are we growing?
I mean, we obviously grow. We get taller, our faces change, we move to higher classes, change semesters, graduate, find jobs, earn money, maybe get married someday. Years pass and we grow old. We can't really stop any of that.

But do we grow as a person too?
I am not talking about getting a degree or becoming successful. I mean, do we become kinder? More humble? Do we learn to understand people better or do we just become better at hiding what we feel. There is a difference, I guess.

We celebrate birthdays like we have accomplished something just by surviving another year. And maybe surviving is also an accomplishment in itself, who knows. But another year of living doesn't necessarily mean another year of learning.

We can make the same mistakes at age 25 that we made at 15. We can hurt people, regret it, promise ourselves we won't do it again and still end up doing the same thing again. How does that happen?Sometimes we know exactly what is wrong with us but we don't do anything about it. We just learn to live with it.

And then we call ourselves mature.

Maybe being mature means not crying over little things anymore. Or maybe it means we have cried so much that we don't feel like explaining ourselves to anyone. Maybe we stop trusting people because we have been hurt before and call it wisdom. I really don't know.

We change, of course. But not every change is growth.

Growing up is strange in many ways. There was a time when we thought adults knew everything. Now we are slowly becoming those adults and half the time, we don't even know what we are doing. We just figure things out as we go, hoping we are doing it right.

Our parents don't have all the answers. Friends we thought would stay forever sometimes leave. Things we wanted so badly become unimportant after a few years. And some things we never cared about suddenly matter a lot.

Life keeps changing. We keep changing too, but are we changing for the better?

Maybe I am thinking too much about this. It could be that growing doesn't have to be so complicated. Maybe it is in the little things we don't even notice. Like when we finally learn to say sorry without adding a but after it. Or when someone succeeds and we feel happy for them instead of wondering why it wasn't us.

Or when we understand that a person can have a different opinion without being a bad person. Small things, really. But not always easy.

We spend so much time trying to become something. A good student, no no a best student!,  a successful engineer, a responsible son or daughter, a person who has their life together. Everyone is trying to get somewhere, and there is nothing wrong with it. It's equally beautiful.

But somewhere in all this, I feel like we always forget to ask who we are becoming, why we are becoming.

We can be educated and still be ignorant about other people's feelings. We can earn a lot and still be greedy. We can grow older and still refuse to admit when we are wrong. It happens, doesn't it?

And the funny thing is, nobody gives us a report card for these things. Nobody tells us that we have become a little more patient this year, or that we have finally learned to listen calmly. We get certificates for passing exams, degrees for completing our studies, promotions for doing our jobs. But the other things? We have to figure all those out ourselves.

I don't think we need to become perfect people. That sounds exhausting, and probably impossible too. We will still get angry, make stupid decisions, misunderstand people and sometimes disappoint ourselves.

But maybe we can try not to remain the same person forever. Maybe we will starrt to question our own behaviour once in a while instead of always finding faults in others.

 Maybe some of us are already growing and we haven't noticed it yet. We might be handling situations differently, thinking before speaking, or letting go of things that once kept us awake at night. Not every change is visible to other people everytime.

I don't have a conclusion to this, honestly. I started writing with a question and I think I have ended up with even more questions now.

Maybe growing up isn't about having fewer questions. Maybe it's about asking different ones.

Time will pass anyway. We will have more birthdays, more responsibilities, more things to worry about. One day we will look back and wonder where all those years went.

I just hope that when we do, we have something more to show for them than a collection of old photographs and a list of things we have achieved.

Are we growing or just getting older?

Well,, I believe that is something we all have to figure out for ourselves.Do you believe too? Share in comments below. HAPPY READING!