Before reading this post, please listen to Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran. Let it play in the background. Let it fill the room, or your headphones, or that quiet space you carry with you. This reflection makes more sense when there’s music reminding you of who you were before life taught you everything it knows now.

There was a time when life felt linear—like if you worked hard enough, loved enough, waited patiently enough, everything would fall into place exactly as planned. Back then, the future felt spacious and forgiving. Mistakes felt temporary. Time felt abundant. You believed that who you were at twenty would simply become a more polished version at thirty, not an entirely different person shaped by grief, courage, loss, love, and survival. You didn’t yet know that life doesn’t just add chapters; it rewrites the narrator.

Significant life events arrive quietly or violently, but never without consequence. They come disguised as endings, beginnings, or interruptions. A goodbye you didn’t expect. A yes you almost didn’t say. A moment when everything you believed about yourself fractures, and you’re forced to rebuild with fewer illusions and more honesty. These events don’t always make you stronger in the loud, triumphant way people like to talk about. Sometimes they simply make you more aware—more tender, more cautious, more discerning about where you place your heart and your energy.

Time does something different. It doesn’t crash into you; it seeps in. It teaches through repetition and distance. It gives you the gift of hindsight, which is both merciful and cruel. With time, you begin to understand that some choices were made with the information and capacity you had then, not the wisdom you have now. You stop punishing your younger self for not knowing what only years could teach. You learn that healing isn’t a straight line, and growth doesn’t always look impressive from the outside.

Time makes you realize that not everything that ended was a failure, and not everything you lost was meant to stay.

As the years pass, urgency changes its tone. You stop rushing toward milestones just to prove you’re moving forward. You start valuing depth over speed, peace over performance, alignment over approval. Time makes you realize that not everything that ended was a failure, and not everything you lost was meant to stay. Some things had to fall apart so you could see what was never sturdy to begin with.

Eventually, perspective shifts in a quiet but profound way. You no longer measure life by how much you’ve achieved, but by how present you are within it. By the conversations that linger. By the moments you felt seen, or offered that feeling to someone else. You notice how the smallest memories—laughter in a kitchen, a familiar road, a song that brings you back—carry more weight than the grand plans you once obsessed over.

Life events teach you what matters. Time teaches you how to hold it. Together, they change the way you move through the world—not harder, but truer. You begin to live less like you’re chasing something and more like you’re listening. Listening to your limits. Listening to your values. Listening to the quiet understanding that life isn’t meant to be mastered, only experienced—fully, imperfectly, and with a little more grace than you had before.

And maybe that’s the real perspective time gives you: the courage to keep becoming, without needing to return to who you were—while still honoring the person who got you here.