The Version of You That Kept Showing Up

Image by @sangharsh_l from Unsplash

They say people change with time. And there is some truth in that.

As we move through life, our experiences accumulate, our perspectives shift, and the things we once thought were fixed about ourselves quietly rearrange. We grow. We adapt. Sometimes we surprise even ourselves.

But I have come to believe that beneath all of that movement, there is something that stays. Not stubbornness. Not stagnation. Something closer to a thread that runs through every version of you, every chapter, every season. The part that was there before the experiences shaped you, and remains after they have.

You see it in the way people talk about someone they have known for years. A story gets told, and before the punchline even lands, someone in the room is already nodding and saying, "that is so like them." Not with surprise. With recognition.

A while back, I found myself venting to a close friend about someone I had encountered at a workplace. She listened the way only a truly dear friend can, with patience and empathy and just enough quiet outrage on your behalf to make you feel genuinely heard. She gave the person a piece of her mind, through me, as good friends do.

And then, somewhere in the middle of my own rant, I started defending them.

I did not plan to. It was not a conscious decision to be gracious or measured. It just happened, the way instincts do. I found myself explaining the context, considering what they might have been carrying, making room for the possibility that there was more to the story than the part that had hurt me.

My friend noticed before I did. She paused and said that no matter how badly someone had treated me, I always seemed to find a way to look for the good in them.

It felt like a compliment. And I received it as one.

But I also know it is my Achilles' heel.

Seeing the good in people is not always a strength. Sometimes it means you extend grace to those who have not earned it, or you absorb more than your fair share of someone else's unresolved difficulty. There is a version of this quality that protects people, and a version that quietly costs you.

I am still learning to tell them apart.

What I do know is this: the way someone behaves towards you says something about where they are. The way you choose to respond says something about who you are. I am not suggesting that what was done was excusable, or that the hurt was not real. But I have found that holding onto the why behind someone's behaviour, not as an excuse, but as a piece of context, makes it easier to respond from a place of clarity rather than reaction.

And that, perhaps, is the thread. Not naivety. Not weakness. A quiet, persistent choice to look for the human in the moment, even when the moment has not been kind.

That is the version of me that keeps showing up. I am still deciding how much to protect, and how much to trust.