By Becky Holland
One of the strange and beautiful things about living in the same community for a long time is realizing how many people you have known in more than one version of themselves.
I have known our mayor since she was in the second grade.
Our Chamber director is the little sister of one of my classmates.
Our recently retired library branch manager and I have been friends since the fourth grade.
I remember our varsity football coach when he was still in the single digits.
I supervised the church nursery when my banker was a little boy.
I taught our middle school principal when she was in the children’s department at church.
And the list could go on.
That is small-town life.
We grow up around one another. We watch children become adults. We watch classmates become parents, professionals, leaders and grandparents. We remember people before the titles, before the résumés, before the gray hair and mortgages and responsibilities.
Sometimes that can be funny.
Sometimes it can be humbling.
And sometimes it can teach us something important.
We are not who we were.
At least, most of us are not.
The child you remember from school is not frozen in time.
The teenager who made a foolish choice is not necessarily the adult standing in front of you today.
The person who once irritated you may have grown kinder.
The person who once seemed shy may now lead a room.
The person you thought you understood at 20 may be an entirely different human at 50.
Life has a way of sanding down some edges and sharpening others.
We lose people.
We love people.
We fail.
We succeed.
We get humbled.
We learn.
We carry things nobody else can see.
And somewhere along the way, most of us become more complicated than the version other people remember.
I think one of the greatest gifts we can give another person is permission to be who they are now.
Not who they were in high school.
Not who they were during their worst year.
Not who we decided they were decades ago.
Who they are today.
That does not mean pretending the past never happened.
It does not mean ignoring patterns or excusing harm.
It simply means allowing room for growth.
I know I would not want to be judged forever by every awkward, foolish, fearful or misguided version of myself that has existed along the way.
I doubt anyone would.
Maybe that is one of the best lessons a small town can teach us.
We know enough of one another’s history to remember where we started.
But if we are paying attention, we also get the privilege of seeing how far people have come.
And perhaps the kindest thing we can do is meet one another there.
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