I personally don't believe people really grow. They just learn

The words of Donald Glover strike with unsettling honesty, as though pulling away the veil of comforting illusions: “I personally don’t believe people really grow. They just learn stuff when they were a kid, and hold on to it, and that affects every relationship they have.” At first, the statement sounds severe, even cynical, but beneath its sharpness lies an ancient question: do we truly transform, or do we simply carry forward the echoes of our earliest years, reshaping them in new forms? His words remind us that the foundation of our souls is laid early, and from it spring the patterns that guide us through all our days.

For when Glover speaks of not believing in growth, he does not deny that people change in outward ways. What he suggests is that the roots of who we are—our fears, our hopes, our habits of love and distrust—are sown in childhood. The things we learn when we are most vulnerable, most impressionable, cling to us like shadows. And as we move through life, we replay these old lessons in our friendships, our romances, our work. Thus, the relationships of adulthood are not new creations, but echoes of the first bonds we ever knew.

The ancients knew this truth well. Consider the story of Oedipus. Though he fled his home to escape a prophecy, the wounds of his childhood—abandonment, secrecy, and fate’s heavy hand—followed him wherever he went. His struggles with kingship, marriage, and destiny were not merely about the present, but the fruit of seeds planted in his earliest days. In this way, Glover’s words ring true: the past is never gone; it shapes every step of the future.

History, too, offers us examples. Take Napoleon Bonaparte, who, as a boy, endured poverty and scorn for his Corsican origins. Even as emperor of France, master of armies and crowned in glory, that sense of being slighted in youth haunted him. It fueled his ambition, his need to prove himself, his hunger for validation. His childhood lessons of inadequacy became the driving force of his relationships with allies and enemies alike. He may have changed the map of Europe, but within, he remained the boy who had once felt less than others.

Yet though Glover frames this as doubt in human growth, there is still wisdom to be found. If the lessons of youth shape us so powerfully, then the true task is not to pretend we can erase them, but to face them with awareness. Growth, then, is not about becoming someone entirely new, but about recognizing the invisible strings of the past and choosing, where possible, to cut them or redirect them. Without this reflection, we remain captives to childhood; with it, we may at last walk freely.

The lesson, O seeker, is this: examine the roots of your being. Ask yourself what stories you carry from your childhood—what wounds, what joys, what unspoken beliefs still govern you. Do you demand affection because once you felt unseen? Do you fear abandonment because once you were left behind? These early lessons will echo in every relationship, unless you bring them into the light. To know yourself is to know the child within you, for that child still whispers in every choice you make.

Practical wisdom follows: seek silence and reflection. Write the stories of your past, speak them aloud, and recognize how they still live in you. In love, in friendship, in work, pause when you feel strong emotions and ask: is this truly the present, or is it the echo of an old wound? By doing so, you honor Glover’s truth while also transcending it—not erasing your past, but transforming it into a guide rather than a chain.

So let Donald Glover’s words be remembered: we may not grow into something wholly new, but we are shaped by the child we once were. Yet within this recognition lies freedom. For though we cannot cast away the lessons of youth, we can choose whether they bind us or teach us. And in that choice, perhaps, lies the truest kind of growth—not the invention of a new self, but the redemption of the old one.