By Patrick Hardeman – In and Out of Darkness

I didn’t grow up dreaming big.

I grew up learning how small I was allowed to be.

Where I’m from, survival was the curriculum. Not growth. Not imagination. Definitely not “what do you want to be when you grow up?” – because the answer had already been quietly assigned.

Stay close. Stay familiar. Stay like us.

And if you didn’t?

“Oh… you think you’re better than us now?”

No.

But I did believe we could be better than this.

That belief didn’t come from my family.

It didn’t come from my neighborhood.

It didn’t come from my schools.

It came from a stranger.

LeVar Burton

Now understand, I wasn’t exactly allowed to sit around watching TV like that. In my house, leisure had to justify its existence. And most of the time, it didn’t.

But one day, I caught something that slipped through all of that.

A calm voice.

A steady presence.

No yelling. No fear. No limitation attached.

Just possibility.

“Butterfly in the sky… I can go twice as high…”

Now imagine hearing that when your entire environment has been teaching you the opposite.

That wasn’t just a theme song.

That was a contradiction to everything I’d been shown.

Up until that point, my world was measured by what I could see around me. Same blocks. Same outcomes. Same ceilings passed down like family recipes nobody wanted to question.

But that moment introduced something dangerous to a limited environment:

Curiosity.

And curiosity doesn’t sit still.

It asks questions people aren’t comfortable answering. It challenges patterns people have accepted. It makes you look around and say, “This can’t be all there is.”

So I did something that didn’t make sense to anyone around me.

I ran five miles to a library.

Not for punishment. Not for sports.

For answers.

Let’s be real, most kids run from books. I treated that library like it held oxygen.

And once I got there, I didn’t skim the surface.

I went deep.

Books. Encyclopedias. Anything that could stretch my mind beyond the block I came from.

Because for the first time, I wasn’t being told who I had to be.

I was discovering who I could be.

That’s a different kind of power.

See, a lot of people don’t lack opportunity.

They lack permission.

Not from the world…

From the people closest to them.

From the environments that benefit from them staying the same.

Because growth has a cost.

It costs comfort.

It costs familiarity.

It cost certain relationships that only work when you’re operating below your potential.

And most people?

They negotiate with that cost.

They say things like:

“I’ll grow… but not too much.”

“I’ll improve… but not if it makes things awkward.”

“I’ll chase more… as long as I don’t outgrow my circle.”

That’s not growth.

That’s controlled stagnation.

That’s putting a ceiling on yourself and calling it loyalty.

Let me say something that mighty not sit well:

Some of us aren’t stuck.

We’re choosing to stay.

Because staying comes with approval. Staying comes with familiarity. Staying doesn’t require you to face the unknown version of yourself.

But growth?

Growth will isolate you before it elevates you.

Growth will make you the “different one” in rooms that raised you.

Growth will have people looking at you like you switched up… when really, you just woke up.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Some people don’t want you to grow, not because they hate you, but because your growth forces them to confront their own ceiling.

And not everybody is ready for that conversation.

So they’ll joke.

They’ll question.

They’ll downplay.

All to protect a version of reality that keeps them comfortable.

Meanwhile, your potential is sitting there… waiting for you to stop negotiating with it.

I’ve lived both sides of this.

I’ve seen the world through imagination as a child, when that was all I had.

And I’ve walked it with my own feet as a man, because I refused to stay where I started.

Different cities. Different countries. Different rooms I was never “supposed” to be in.

Not because I was the most talented.

Not because I had the most support.

But because I chose curiosity over comfort.

Effort over approval.

Growth over company.

And if I’m being honest?

That one moment in front of a TV didn’t just inspire me.

It introduced me to a version of myself that my environment never would have.

So now I’ll leave you with this:

What are you protecting, your comfort, or your potential?

What conversations are you avoiding because they might disrupt your current circle?

What opportunities have you walked past because nobody else around you valued them?

And that one that hits the hardest…

Are you shrinking to stay connected… or growing, even if it means standing alone for a while?

Because they don’t lead to the same life.

Turns out… that kid was right.

I could go anywhere.

“What have you lost trying to belong where you were meant to grow beyond?”

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