Growth Feels Like A Loss…
Four years ago, while navigating my so called “promising” career, doing stuffs for my current social community, and volunteering in a new community, a friend asked this big question to me: “How did you achieve all this… at what cost, Freddy?”
I answered, but the question stayed with me. That night, I turned it over in my mind like loose change, I ask myself this: what if growth isn’t about gaining, but losing?
Think of growth as a game of UNO Stacko, stacking accomplishments higher, pretending the foundation isn’t wobbling underneath. But every block we add means another has to be pulled away.
Psychologist Erik Erikson called this an identity crisis: the quiet grief of shedding old versions of ourselves to make space for something new. It’s not failure. It’s necessary. Like a snake wriggling free of a skin that’s grown too tight.
In science terms, the brain trims unused neural pathways to function more efficiently. It’s called synaptic pruning. Growth isn’t just uncomfortable; it’s a slow, silent fading of who we used to be. In some ways, we’re all walking memorials to our past selves.
Butterflies get it. Do you think the cocoon wants to leave its shell? Maybe it’s cozy in there. But to become the butterfly, it has to struggle, crack open, and leave its nest behind. What if the pupa just wants to stay as it is? Too bad.
Yes, growth is beautiful for the butterfly, but it doesn’t ask for permission. It demands struggle and requires letting go, because that is its nature. Is it ours too?
There are a few examples of how each life stage demands we let go of something. The student becomes the professional is trading curiosity for deadlines; The caregiver becomes the empty nester is exchanging purpose for quiet; The hungry striver becomes the leader is now fluent in strategy but foreign to camaraderie.
We think we’re building ourselves up, but the truth is actually, we’re erasing ourselves instead.
I used to believe success was proof of my worth. Every accolade, every “good job,” felt like a trophy in a race no one else was running. I chased achievements, reputation, relationships. And thinking they’d fill some invisible gap inside me. But perfection is a ghost. The more I reached, the emptier my hands felt.
I juggled everything, convinced that success meant more. More efficiency. More recognition. More control.
And when I finally slowed down, I noticed something. I felt disconnected. Not just from others, but from myself — like I had become a stranger in my own life.
I remembered a book I never finished in high school, it is “Winner Stands Alone” by Paulo Coelho. Even then, the title haunted me. “Why must winners stand alone?” And now, I understood my own question. I learned on that climbing higher had meant leaving people behind, sometimes even myself. It was about what we sacrifice when we equate altitude with meaning. And we chase the summit, only to find the air too thin to breathe and unintentionally lose its purpose.
At first, I told myself I was chasing success for survival. I need to prove I deserved a seat at the table. But at some point, survival turned into a hole. A deep, endless space where more was never enough.
Not another accomplishment. Not another title. However, it is a connection instead.
Not the kind that comes from shared achievements, but the kind that exists in shared stillness. The kind that doesn’t ask, “What have you done?” but whispers, “I see you.” So I’ve started asking myself a different question. Not “What’s next?” but “Who’s next?”
Who can I walk beside, not ahead of?
I don’t regret the years I spent chasing. Regret implies I’d change the past, and I wouldn’t. And I needed it to become who I am. And I’ve learned this: success isn’t a race with a finish line. People say that all the time, but living it is something else entirely.
Growth feels like loss because it is loss. It asks us to let go of things we once held tightly and believed it was true:
- The workaholic who measured worth in hours is mistaking their hard-work for meaning.
- The perfectionist who mistook criticism for care could believe love was conditional.
- The approval-seeker who agrees with everyone but not with themselves.
But when we shed those things, we don’t become less. We rediscover who we were before the world told us to be more.
And that’s what I’m learning.
To grow, I have to release what no longer serves me — even if it once defined me. The people who truly matter don’t need me to be more. They just need me to be here.
Yes, I still lose myself sometimes. I overcommit, slip into old patterns, forget to slow down. But now, I recognize the difference between running toward something and running from someone. Growth isn’t a straight road; it’s a spiral. We return to the same lessons, but each time, we hold them more gently.
The cost of growth? It wasn’t losing people. It was losing the illusion that I had to earn my place in their hearts. So I’ll keep shedding. Letting go of the selves I’ve outgrown. Letting go of the fear that less means lacking.
And in their place, I’ll hold on to the people who stayed — not because I climbed high enough, but because they never needed me to.
