Growth hurts. I do not just mean the growth we experience through puberty but through change. Through becoming a new person for whatever reason, whether for better or for worse. Some of the pain comes from the work one has to put into completely changing themselves as changing every single aspect of yourself equates to changing the habits you do daily. That is, you are the sum of your daily habits to some extent, and as we all know, old habits, and especially bad ones, do not go away so easily.
The immense difficulty of changing one's habits is doubtless familiar to you all. After so many attempts the endeavor seems almost futile. But after a while those habits do change. You begin to become consistent with them and start to see positive results in your life as a consequence. This should be motivation enough to continue these habits, but the human proclivity to become complacent must not be underestimated. It is more likely that, once we see the positive results from the change of habit, we become satisfied and stop doing those habits only to end up back in the same place we started, meaning we have to hop back on the saddle so to speak and redo what we just tirelessly worked to be consistent at.
Another source of the pain of growth come from the fact that it requires honesty with oneself. We have the proclivity as well to suppose ourselves to be worthy of praise, admiration or love of another person for reasons that are never clear or never reasonable. It shows the inadequacies that we have subconsciously always been aware of but have ignored for the more preferable image that we hold of ourselves; the image of the person we would like to be/become. In short, it shows us how delusional we can be when concerning who we really are as people. The fastest way to show this delusion is to be rejected by the ones we love. It shows us that we are lacking in something. This is indeed a painful realization, but it must be met head on. For more pain will be caused by trying to run from the inadequacy rather than trying to figure out what that inadequacy actually is in the first place and seeking to change it in some way.
But the source that cause the most pain is the time it takes to change for the better. We can very quickly change for the worst but the ascent to excellence is slow and arduous indeed. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) settles in and we imagine that life and people are going to leave us if we take too long to become a person we actually can look at in the mirror without absolute disgust and hatred. It almost is like the world is screaming at you, "Already be the person who is worthy of love, acceptance and admiration, or we will leave you in the dust". So, to not miss out, we put the growth process on halt to not get left behind. We start to become resentful of people for that. It almost seems like people won't treat like a human until you become what they consider to be a human, either through a criterion of physical attractiveness, financial worth or some other inconsequential metric.
The reason why I bring all this up, dear reader, is to show you just how painful growth can be. It hurts like hell. It's not going to be fun, though there will be times in which you are very happy with the progress you made. Somedays you will absolutely hate yourself and somedays you will absolutely hate other people. The time it takes to become who you want to be may shy you away from walking down this straight and narrow road; but what lays at the end of this painful path is something more beautiful than you can ever imagine.
Those old and bad habits change to good habits. Habits that positively contribute to your life and the lives of others around you. You will eventually come to terms with you who actually are so that you can take the steps to become who you are meant to be. The time will fly past once patience is mastered and the habits you have built up become secondhand nature, and in time you will look back on that time in fondness. Eventually you fall in love with the process of growth. You become and addict of sorts, always chasing it in some way, shape or form.
Growth hurts, but for good reasons. Even in the most painful of situations, there is hope for a better tomorrow and a brighter future. But that hope can only be validated through the contentious effort that one puts in to ensure that that better tomorrow and brighter future actually transpire the way they imagine it to. Only then will the pain start to make sense and mean something.
Take care.