self examination

I'm not sure if loneliness is my greatest fear anymore. I think I've worked that out with myself. Made peace with it, even found comfort in my own solace. To be honest, now that I'm turning 20 soon, I’ve realised that what truly unsettles me is the fear of stagnation. The fear of growing older without growing inward, without any development. Existing, but not evolving. My biggest fear is not progressing as a person. What disturbs me most is the possibility of deteriorating in character. That I might wake up one day and realise I’ve become smaller, harsher, less aware than I once was. I notice this fear most intensely when I make a mistake or do something wrong. In those moments, I spiral:

"Have I changed for the worse?" 

"Am I not a better person than I was before?"

"Have I regressed?"

I think this is a fear of moral regression. Of becoming someone I don’t respect. As I approach 20, I'm entering a stage where growth no longer feels automatic. When we were younger, change happened because life kept shifting around us. Now, growth feels deliberate. It feels like a responsibility. And with that responsibility comes the unsettling awareness that if I remain the same or worse, it is no longer accidental. It is chosen. At its core, my fear of stagnation may actually be a fear of becoming complacent, of losing my empathy, my self awareness, my capacity to correct myself. Stagnation feels dangerous to me because it implies a decline in my integrity.

There's a reason we are haunted by our past mistakes and regrets. Why our mistakes feel heavier than they objectively are. When something goes wrong, I don’t just register it as an isolated action. I interpret it as evidence. A single moment becomes a referendum on my entire character. Instead of thinking, “I handled that poorly,” my mind asks, “Is this who I am becoming?” The spiral is about what my mistake might symbolize. I am afraid that one wrong action reveals a flaw and that flaw is permanent.

Of course, it goes without saying that to err is human. Rationally, I understand that mistakes are inseparable from living. Imperfection is woven into our nature. Although, when you're in that moment, I guess you kind of just abandon all rationale, and you just spiral. In the immediacy of guilt, perspective dissolves, and all that remains is self-doubt. It's not a good feeling. I assume when I enter my 20's, I will be more prone to self deprecation because no one is managing my development anymore. I am entirely responsible. Now, I clearly hold myself to a moral framework. I care about who I am. I am in a position where I have yet to feel proud of myself, but it's okay. Maybe that, too, is part of the process. I am young. There is refinement left to do. There are flaws still surfacing. There will be more mistakes. But I am still in motion. Without failure, there is no growth. 

There is also one more thing that we often overlook. It is something that makes growth sustainable. We already have discipline. We already have standards. We already believe in change. What we're missing is permission to be imperfect without collapsing our entire identity. What we're missing is grace. When our standards are high but our self compassion is low, we reflect on ourselves negatively. We think that growth is supposed to be linear but it's not. We imagine becoming better as a steady upward climb. More patient than yesterday, more self aware than last year, always improving in visible ways. But real growth is a cycle. We will revisit the same insecurities, the same flaws, the same tendencies but each time with slightly more awareness. Sometimes growth feels like failure because we are noticing what we used to ignore. The discomfort we feel may actually be evidence that we are evolving, not deteriorating. 

Perhaps the goal is not to ensure that I never regress in a moment. Perhaps it is simpler and more sustainable: if I falter, I recalibrate. If I dislike something in myself, I refine it. Growth may look like subtle course corrections, repeated quietly over years. Not a dramatic transformation. I know this much: the past is fixed and unchanged, but my response to it is not. What I do have control over is the future and my actions moving forward. If I dislike who I was in a moment, then I have the responsibility to become better in the next one. If I don't like what I did, then I simply shouldn't do it again. I've always told myself and my friends that regret without change is just tragic, and change is scary, but stagnation is far more frightening.