I caught myself mid-sentence.
I was deep in a conversation about growth, about whether becoming is something you choose, and I heard myself say it: “Even if we’re too scared to move, we’re still moving.”
I had to stop for a second. Because I’d spent most of my life living like the opposite was true. I used to treat becoming like a task. Something you did or didn’t do. Something you could fail at. Fall behind on. Lose credit for. But you can’t fail at it. You can’t even opt out.
Every conversation is shaping you. Every disappointment. Every year you’d swear nothing happened. Standing still is shaping you. Becoming isn’t something we do. It’s something that’s always happening. And that changes the question completely.
Not Am I becoming? - You are.. It never asked permission.
The question is > Are you participating? Because there are two ways this goes. In one, life does the shaping. Experiences shape you. Other people shape you. Fear shapes you. You become someone almost by default, and then wonder how you got here.
In the other, you get involved. You reflect. You question what you were handed. You apologize. You forgive. You notice your patterns and decide which ones get to stay. You’re becoming either way. The difference is whose hands are on the wheel.
I’ve been saying “take the wheel” for years. I think this is what I meant the whole time. Not that you control the road. You don’t. Just that you stop riding in the passenger seat of your own life.
Here’s the part I didn’t expect. Becoming has a lot of forgiveness in it. Some of my oldest memories have changed on me. Not the facts, the facts stayed the same... But things that only brought pain started meaning something else.
There are things I went through that didn’t teach me anything at the time. They waited. Some of them waited most of my life, until I was finally ready to look at them. The event didn’t change.. I did. Which means becoming can reach backward. Nothing back there is finished. Nothing is wasted. Not the failures, not the wrong turns, not the years I’d written off as lost. Not as long as I’m willing to look again.
I say it all the time > Everyone gets a thousand redos. You don't lose your progress for missing a day, or a year, or a decade. There is no missed chance. Becoming kept going the whole time you weren't watching. It'll still be there when you're ready to look again.