It’s never too late to experience growing pains. If it is our onus in life to grow and to change, with no cutoff point after which we are absolved of this duty, then why are we dumbfounded when those pains of adolescence occur again and again at each stage of life? We perhaps grow more serious over the years, but need we become less sensitized? Does the snub, the willful wounding, the being overlooked, the derision become less important? If so, why? Perhaps it is a mark of self-worth, and that is good, but if it is merely the building of a cocoon around ourselves, except in the direst of circumstances, it becomes more of a punishment than a defense.

We are born into this world to experience and therefore, are given defenses to deal with the negative, but when those defenses grow to isolate us, then they become more than protective blankets. They become walls which become our prisons. We were meant to experience and to be vulnerable to changes. And lest we atrophy, from the cradle to the crematorium, we need to fight to keep ourselves open to those experiences that invite change.

For MVB the prompt is “Dumfounded.”
I wrote this advice to myself four years ago on my birthday, but decided to remind myself again of its message.