Don't Give Up; Grow Up.

There’s a fine line between giving up on something and growing out of something. But the more you become aware of the difference between the two, the thicker and easier the line is to see.

Giving up usually revolves around a negative connotation; like being unmotivated, or becoming fed up with something to the point where you choose to not be apart of it anymore. You simply, quit. You know, like a poor sport? Quitting is associated with giving up. It’s a very impulsive and compulsive way of stopping something abruptly. It’s essentially forcing, or trying to force yourself to lose interest in something. While on the other hand, growing out of something means you naturally lose interest, or you naturally move on. Makes sense, right? Giving up is forceful while growing up is natural.

Look at it like this. Everything grows. It’s an essential part of life. We grow mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Not only is growing inevitable, it’s flawless. I personally cannot think of one thing that shows growing to be anything but beautiful. Some might say death; but even death doesn’t take the beauty away from growing. You can die at any point. You don’t need to grow old to die. Death is something completely separate.

Lets take humans for example. We start in the womb and grow appendages and limbs; our brains grow and develop, and then precisely at the perfect moment we are borne into existence. Born into something unique and grown into something graceful; a being. As infants we grow and learn how to crawl and walk and communicate though body language, gestures, and vocal tones. From infants we grow into toddlers where we learn how to communicate verbally and mentally. We learn how feel emotions, yet, do not understand what the feeling is, our how to react to it. We learn how to read and write and find what’s right from wrong. From toddlers we grow into teenagers where we understand our feelings just a little bit more. We start to learn how to love romantically and get the choice to choose who to love. We learn how to think for ourselves and grow into individuals. From teenagers we grow into adults where we finally grow into ourselves and learn who we genuinely are, which to me, is the most exciting stage of growth. And then as adults, we spend a great deal of time soul searching and searching for that special someone to spend the rest of our life with. That someone who is the perfect mixture with the genuine recipe of you. And then we grow together while we grow old together. From the womb to the tomb.

This goes for all animals and plants too, of course. Just not as complex. But nevertheless, they most definitely grow.

When I was 8 years old I loved Pokemon cards. I mean, I loved em! But you know what? One day, I didn’t want to play Pokemon anymore. I started playing Tony Hawks Pro Skater on N-64. So, did I give up on Pokemon, or did I grow out of it?

Instead of referring back to when I was a child playing games, let’s relate it to me now. Let’s relate it to passion. And by passion, I mean trying to turn your hobby into a career.

The first thing that I wanted to be when I grew up, that I can remember, was a professional basketball player. I really wanted to play in the NBA and be on Kobe’s team. I wanted to be a Laker so bad. Then some years passed and I wanted to be a professional skateboarder. I olied a 15 stair when I was 14 years old; that’s more stairs than my age! Then some more years passed and I was sure that I wanted to be rapper. I thought I’d be signed to a label by the age of 25. I wanted to be on Aftermath and Interscope Records; that’s Eminem and Dr. Dre’s label. Then some more time passed and now I’m a Blog Junkie. Did I give up basketball? No. I play basketball almost everyday in my backyard. I even taught a friends dog, Hinabi to play. Did I give up on skateboarding? Nope. I skate everywhere. Rap? Naw, I still got tracks I’m sitting on that are fire. I didn’t give up any of these. They’’ll all now just notches in my belt. But, I did grow apart from each of them a little bit. The spark died down a bit for sure. But, that’s life, right? If the spark didn’t die down I wouldn’t have found a new passion. If the spark hadn’t died down I wouldn’t have fallen in love again. Growing is essential. Don’t ever beat yourself up because you feel like you’re giving up on something you’ve had a passion for for so long. Trust yourself; thats a big one. You’re being led into a new direction. To something new. Something fun. A new spark. Do you know how big Earth is? There’s a lot of things to try on this planet. A lot of sparks to ignite.

This goes hand in hand with relationships, as well. Like I said a few lines above, “If the spark hadn’t died down I wouldn’t have fallen in love again.” Above, I was referring to passions, but this also coincides with lovers and significant others. We’ve all been in a toxic relationship, right? Come on, raise your hand. Where one blink later your fairytale turn into a nightmare. When you’re “labeled” a “couple” and all of sudden the “label” unlocks the chains to the gates of heartbreak-hell that's holding back all possession, pressure, and expectation. It’s like once were “labeled” or “itemized” the whole ‘friend’ship jumps overboard. It’s just a ship with no friend or compass lost at sea. The 'friend' disintegrates and it just turns into possessiveness and trying to own one another. We start to invalidate each other’s opinions. That’s not love and that’s not growth. That is in fact, is the opposite. When all of a sudden you realize both of you have your iPhone read receipts on and your follow each other’s locations. When you feel like your individuality doesn’t even exist anymore. When you’ve sadly forgotten what privacy even is. When you actually start to mentally and emotionally deteriorate. When the aches persist and the wounds don’t heal as quick as they used to. When your creativity is screaming at you internally. When your soul knows something you don’t but it’s doing all that it can to try and tell you something extremely important. The relationship where you just can’t seem to make it work but can’t seem to walk away, either. Yeah, I’ve been there, unfortunately. Call me crazy, but I think it’s normal. Sad but true; I think its part of growth. Its almost kind of beautiful in a humanly-cinematic way. I believe we need to go thought that. How else are we going to learn? Through Hollywood films? Yeah… No. My advice, don’t force it. Let it happen naturally. Grow out of the toxicity rather than giving it up and attempt to quit it cold turkey. It becomes much easier to walk away from a mess when you grow out of it naturally. Unlike giving it up, growing out of it is basically like a sense of closure because you’ve already come to grips with acceptance within yourself. And closure is key, just like forgivingness. Always try to leave things as smooth as possible on your way out. If you can, just pretend you’re Michael and moonwalk your way out that bitch.

Let’s take a piece of my love life for example. I have been trying to give a girl up for a couple years, now. I have tried and tried, over and over again to give this girl up, but it has never been a success. I just keep running right back to her. After numerous times of running away from her and then running right back into her open arms, it begins to get exhausting. Because it is exhausting, and it is emotionally draining. It wears me out. We become desensitized to all sorts of abuse like: emotional, verbal, physical, and so on. I don’t even know which one is the worst. The drama actually becomes a dynamic in the relationship. We begin to get comfortable and familiar with the chaos. We even begin to believe our own lies! And believing any type of lie from anyone, especially yourself, while becoming comfortable with chaos by any means, is unhealthy.

This is where growing up comes into play.

Let’s keep it simple since simplicity is golden. Just go with the flow. That’s it. That’s what growing is all about. This whole time you’ve been alive you haven’t tried to grow, right? Think about it… I’m 26 years old and I definitely didn’t try to grow to be a 26 year old. It just happened. Growing just happens. But while it happens you can take advantage and make the most of it. You can follow your intuition, learn from your past, take what you’ve learned from your past and apply it to the present to better your future. That is growth. While also observing others and learning from their actions, situations, mistakes, failures, and successes. Growing is naturally observing, learning, and applying. So when it comes to anything, including toxic relationships, just go with the flow. If you deem yourself to be spiritually “woke” and conscious, and a self aware individual, then everything usually works itself out because you trust yourself and you trust the universe and you trust the process. However, of course, there are exceptions. Like when “going with the flow” is absolutely no longer an option and nonnegotiable. This usually refers to something along the lines of someone or something jeopardizing your freedom and/or you life. If that is the case, the yes, Apple Q that shit. But for the most part, If you keep running back, even though you feel like your soul isn’t being completely satisfied, something is being satisfied. There’s clearly a deeper reason for why your spirit, heart, body, and mind keep running back. There is clearly a deep divine connection between the two of you. And if that is the case, I suggest holding onto that as long as possible. Even if it is a mess. Those connections are rare. To have somebody vibe and mix will with somebody as weird and unique as yourself is beyond fathomable. It’s what everyone dreams of, right? Some never experience that feeling. There is clearly love present. And there is nothing wrong with love, being loved, or loving as long as it’s not hurting yourself or anyone around you. But like the lead singer of Incubus, Brandon Boyd says, “Love hurts, but sometimes It’s a good hurt and it feels like I’m alive.”

When referring to growth and relationships, a major factor is your spirituality. And by that I mean your self-awareness and the trust and love you have for yourself. If you haven’t dabbled with spirituality yet, then I suggest you work on that first. But I’ll discuss loving yourself in another article.

But after so many times of trying to break it off with this girl and failing, I just stopped giving up on her. I took a new approach. I mentally, emotionally, and spiritually changed my entire lifestyle and perception on everything around me and within me. Instead of me focusing on how to successfully give this girl up, I started focusing on how I could grow myself and become a better me on the daily, and I focused on how to spread that message and cause a ripple effect to the people around me; like the one’s I love the most and the one I was trying to give up on.

So with all that being said, I believe in only two reasons why we keep running back.
1: Familiarity and comfortability. Or in other words, misery loves company.
2: A slight universal glitch with a soul mate.

To elaborate on number 1. The reason you keep running back to the chaos is because its familiar. Even though it’s hell, it’s your hell. You, in a way, as Kurt Cobain would say, “enjoy the comfort in being sad.” Like I said above, you become desensitized to all sorts of abuse. So, when you get hurt, it doesn’t hurt like it used to. Because now you have tougher skin. Now you can hold it in. Now you don’t cry. Now you believe you’re not weak. When really, you’re just becoming weaker by the second. So if you’re being treated poorly and its its obvious to you and others, and you’re still running back, then chances are it’s because you’re scared of change and fear the unfamiliar. If this is you, work on breaking the comfort in being uncomfortable. Break free. Get uncomfortable; you’ll be comfortable in the end. I promise. Yeah, it’s a little scary, but you’ll find a new boo!

The second reason for running back is because you genuinely have solid chemistry together. Your love language mixes well. Your touch is electric. You can literally feel the electricity running through you as you touch one another. And the fights usually stem from things that need to be worked on naturally anyways, because were human beings; like communication. A lot of people have trouble communicating their thoughts and opening up which really puts a dapper on the relationship. Trust and communication is the basis of any friendship, let alone a relationship. If you are able to communicate effectively, then the relationship should work if all else is also healthy. If you feel like you’re missing your best friend and your soul mate every time you leave, then you aren’t running back for the comfort of being sad, you’re running back because love is present. Maybe the timing wasn’t right when you met one another and thats why it didn’t work out. But when is timing ever right? If you feel like you’re missing something important in your life when you aren’t with them, then chances are you are. And it also means minor, yet crucial issues to work out. Relationship issues. Healthy, organic, new, untraditional, issues to effectively communicate with one another. And that’s all part of growing. Don’t give up the spark. If anything, let the wick burn out before blowing out the candle.

And as I become more self aware and more conscious and more aligned with who I am, and what I actually want in life, and want I actually want in a girl, everything becomes more explicit and more evident of what is truly best for me, and what I truly want in this crazy beautiful world. I know the feeling of your soul longing for honest satisfaction. I know the feeling of the missing puzzle piece inside your heart. But after many reflections and realizations; epiphanies and revelations; rock bottoms and breakthroughs; digesting and decompressing; mediation and stillness; it all comes down to one thing; being honest with yourself. Do you want to live everyday lying to yourself? Do you want to go on everyday pretending the rigid puzzle piece you found is the perfect fit? Do you like pretending? Or do you want to be courage’s and step outside of what’s familiar and grow, and thrive, and find that perfect puzzle piece that does fit, and does satisfy your soul, whatever it may be. Who knows? Maybe you satisfy your soul and you just haven’t found yourself yet. You’ll never know unless you grow.

We should all allow ourselves to grow. We should all try new things. It’s so important. How are you going to know if you like something if you never try it? We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take.

Don’t miss your shot.
Acknowledge your stepping stones.
Follow your heart.
Follow your dreams.
Follow the signs
Follow yourself.
And soon everyone will follow the leader.

Grow with the flow.