On Becoming Better
Don't be sorry, be better.
Not a single person on this entire earth is beyond becoming better.
It sounds simple, almost comforting, until you start attaching real people to it. It’s easy to believe in growth when it’s abstract, when it applies to humanity as a whole. It becomes harder when you narrow it down to individuals, to moments where someone has hurt you, disappointed you, or failed to change despite having every opportunity to do so.
I remember moments where I didn’t show up as the person I expect myself to be. Not in some dramatic, obvious way, but in smaller ones. Times where I knew I could have handled something better and didn’t. Times where I repeated the same pattern, even after recognising it. And in those moments, it would have been easy to decide something final about myself. To label it, close it off, and believe that’s just who I am.
That’s where this belief starts to feel less like a principle and more like a challenge. Because most people don’t reject the idea outright, they just adjust it. It shifts from “no one is beyond becoming better” to “most people can become better,” with a few unspoken exceptions. There are always exceptions.
But the moment exceptions enter the picture, the belief changes. It stops being about possibility and becomes a kind of judgment, where you decide who is still capable of growth and who has passed some invisible point of no return. That position feels justified in the moment, especially when you’ve experienced the same behaviour repeatedly, when effort feels one-sided, when change never seems to come.
Still, believing someone can become better is not the same as excusing what they’ve done. It doesn’t mean accepting harm, tolerating repeated behaviour, or staying in situations that drain you. It simply means recognising that a person is not permanently defined by their worst moment.
Even that can feel uncomfortable, because it removes a certain kind of closure. It’s easier to label someone as a bad person and move on than it is to accept that they are more complicated than that. But if people are fixed in that way, then the same has to apply to you. Every mistake, every failure, every moment where you didn’t show up as the person you want to be would become permanent.
Most people don’t actually believe that, at least not when it comes to themselves.
So, the belief holds, not because it’s easy, but because the alternative creates a world that feels too rigid to live in. It asks you to accept that change has limits, that some people eventually lose the ability to become better, and that growth can simply stop.
Holding onto the idea that no one is beyond becoming better doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t make people change, and it doesn’t remove the need for boundaries or accountability. What it does is leave space for something more complex, where responsibility and possibility exist at the same time.
That tension never fully disappears. There’s no clean resolution, no simple way to separate people into those who can change and those who can’t. There’s just the choice to believe that improvement remains possible, even when there’s very little evidence for it.
And that belief says as much about you as it does about anyone else.
