30/07/2026
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30/07/2026
Share:
Whether you're 18 or 45 you’ve dealt with the peer pressure of squashing your beliefs when surrounded by family and old friends.
Even if age, wisdom, and experience shape our perspective, the inherent biases and foundational truths we learn as children are difficult to distance ourselves from completely.
Early age socialization frames our mind and gives us a measure of our capabilities and choices as adopted from our surroundings. What we choose to wear, what movies we watch, which party we support, and whether we pick pizza with pepperoni over mushrooms, these are not necessarily inherent preferences as much as they were habitually adopted, unchanged standards acquired mostly from our elders.
With at least eighteen years of constant conditioning then, at any given age, what is the scope for growth and how resilient is this change?
For example:
While many young adults who leave home for university experience an immense amount of homesickness in the initial months of moving, this longing for home can actually be attributed to a sense of whiplash assumed by the lack of directional advice. There is no longer someone to follow, to guide them in their decisions.
For the first time in their lives they must figure out:
Which yogurt do I buy, which laundry detergent works best, how does it even work, do I prefer wearing green over yellow, is this politician really helping people?
It leads you down a rabbit hole of existential dilemmas demanding to be acknowledged.
When the restaurant only serves mushrooms on their pizza and you realise it isn't half bad, that in fact you might even prefer it over your staple, where does that leave you?
This continues throughout the rest of your life. As you confront these questions, you piece together a new picture of yourself, your identity, and your choices. Over time you no longer recognize the once subconscious thought process behind your previous preferences. Now replaced with a much more active reasoning, these choices in turn become the guide towards new experiences, changing lifestyles, and the evolution of morals and ethics.
The same stands true for those who remain within the walls of their family home but evolve through socializing with various groups of friends, immersing themselves within foreign media, or simply reading books on topics otherwise unfound in their habitat.
Upon stepping outside your curated bubble, you realise your personal reality requires adapting against those old ways that have not simply disappeared just because your link to them has.
The controversial new view you had on the recent political events, the temperature on the thermostat, the fact that dinner has too much oil and you stopped eating dessert, may be taken as unseriously as the dances you used to break into as a kid, and your personal beliefs may feel squashed under the weight of this old socialised surrounding.
But if your home, your family, and even some friends are unfortunately not part of this bubble but they are still a part of your life, must you regress into the old unevolved version of yourself from your previous years or adapt your beliefs to those in your old surroundings every time you converse?
If your thought process, and internal monologue moved to develop your wisdom based on your choices, opportunities, and experiences, but their practical implementation remains stunted in these old environments, is the wisdom and perspective earned genuine or is it fleeting?
It is a question worth asking:
If every conversation of ours is edited to better fit the narrative of the person opposite us, do we truly change or do we simply adapt?
After years of building a career by pleasing the boss, sacrificing innate needs in the face of relationships, many of the decisions you take after your 30’s require an additional amount of internal debate on account of your actions affecting a flock of other people.
Respecting individuals and their beliefs by contributing to discussions in a way better comprehensible to them and amending decisions to consider others is not necessarily a bad thing, rather it is diplomatic and sensible, depending on the depth and range of their understanding.
While the act may seem to tread a grey area of growth and adaptability, it does not erase the months or years of work you have put into improving various facets of your life, and the otherwise actionable achievements you have pursued in alignment with them through learning lessons, making tough decisions, and chasing opportunities.
Perhaps our ability to adapt our ever-evolving morals and choices is the biggest marker of a growth. Perhaps you cannot change unless you are willing to adapt. As long as we are aware and choose for ourselves, our wisdom may remain genuine and our character true. At least that is what I choose to believe.
by Reem Jaed Baloch
