Today I went shopping for clothes for the first time in a while and a strange thing came to my attention: my tastes have changed. I’m not sure when it happened, it has probably been slowly evolving, but I found myself gravitating towards styles I never liked before, and trying on items I used to pass over quickly. I also wanted to shop and buy things in new and different stores. Stores off the beaten path.

No, this post is not about clothes shopping. It’s really about how we grow and change throughout our lives. It just amazes me how different I am now, than in my early 20s, mid-20s and even late 20s. My habits are not only different, but I view things differently. My perspective on many things has changed. Including consumerism, materialism, environmentalism, and other more personal things like friendship and relationships in general.

It’s a nice thought to think that everyone grows and changes as they age. But I know this is not true for everyone. I have known people who not only do not grow, but actually regress a bit. And it’s usually due to someone in their life who drags them down emotionally and spiritually. I think a lot of divorces happen for this reason. One person changes and grows in a myriad of ways, and the other remains stagnant. If they don’t part ways, growth slows and stops on all fronts. If they do part ways, the person who had outgrown their partner is allowed to flourish and bloom, and the other person is freed up to find the right partner whom they are meant to grow with.

I’m not saying I’m all enlightened and have it all figured out. Far from it. I respect my elders and how much more they have been through than me and I realize that I am still a young, naive person in their eyes. I remain open to learning from them, from others, and from any medium that is remotely interesting to me. I look at each decade of life as a bunch of squares on the board game of life. Each time you round the corner of a new decade in your life, you should be leaving some things behind (regret, anger, selfish acts), and open to learning and embracing the new things that will come. And I found it’s good food for my soul to surround myself with others who also grow and change in their own ways, so that I might also learn from them.