Everyone Evolves

When my elder son was a child, I used to deal with him in a certain manner. When he became a teenager, he was no longer the innocent child that I could cuddle and play around with. He had evolved. His physicality changed as did his intelligence, as he grew. Initially, I struggled to engage with him because I still saw him as a child while he had evolved. I had to recalibrate my perception of who he was to engage with him properly. I had to acknowledge the fact that my son was the same but also different as a teenager.

Just as it is true with my kid, it is true with all other relationships. I cannot engage and deal with my wife, parents, siblings, and friends in the same way always. As my parents’ age, their needs and expectations of how they want to manage their life change. I can’t engage with them the way I used to when I was young. They have evolved, and so have I.

We struggle with some of our relationships because we relate to the person today with the perception of yesterday. It could be the same as the other person, too, who could be dealing with you based on his or her perception of who you were in the past and not who you are today. Unless we continuously recalibrate our perception of who the other person is, we will struggle in relationships.

This concept does not apply only to external relationships. It also applies to our relationship with ourselves. I am not the same person today compared to who I was a decade back or five years back or six months back. Every day I am evolving through experiences gained and knowledge accumulated. If I don’t renew the perception I have of myself, the actions I take today will be rooted in my perception of who I was in the past. E.g., I am thinking about some old mistakes or failures about myself, and because I am stuck with an old mental image of myself, I struggle to take bold decisions that are in synch with the evolved person I am today.

In chess, a pawn that reaches the other side transforms into a queen. Many of us are like pawns. We trundle through life, accumulating experiences, and advancing through the chessboard of life without sometimes realizing that we have evolved in our consciousness to a higher level. The future is a space of infinite possibilities that we can seize knowing that we will evolve today into some one better tomorrow.