Grow with the flow

"Tori was quite sneaky when she was little, but I think she grew out of it."

Hmmm...can we really 'grow out of' something? Can we actually lose parts of our character? Can we simply grow out of ways we live, and principles we were raised on? Can our timing and vocabulary change the way our mind functions?

You are who you are. You don't grow out of anything. You either learn to control, cover, or replace. The only thing that changes as we grow older besides our appearance is our knowledge and experience. With knowledge and experience, our timing gets better and we contribute to the "don't do this again" section of our brain. But we don't lose anything (except baby fat :P) as we get older, we merely add on to whatever we already had. That's why being "like unto a child" is possible. That why we watch a movie and cry because we see the potential we have to be better than we are. Time is constantly passing, we are constantly messing up, and constantly growing up. There's nothing we can ever do about that. But somehow we're fine. How? Because it's in our blood to progress. When we aren't progressing, we're depressing. Our body and spirit live to grow, and our mind adapts to the things that we change. Maybe personality complexes are founded on childhood weaknesses that people haven't found a way to cover, control, or replace in a way that promotes growth. Not knowing how to go about growing, probably would result in a skewed perspective of who we think we are. But we are how we let ourselves grow, and we don't ever "grow out of" who we are.

Maybe I'm choosing to grow into a sad, sad, teen with a lot of day-dreamable boring classes. I'll analyze the phrase "walk in someone else's shoes" later. Tune in. ;)