Creative Destruction. The cornerstone of capitalism. The old being consistently destroyed by the new. It is both a good and bad thing.

In my younger years, it was a regular thing to go to Blockbuster and pick out movies for the weekend. With friends, with my boyfriend, by myself. Here’s where I was in life – I didn’t even own a VCR. You could rent one there, though. I recall one weekend that I sat on the couch and watched movie after movie. It was fantastic. I find myself filled with nostalgia for those simpler times. The smell of the store. The hope a copy of that movie you really wanted to see is waiting for you. Browsing around, looking at the tape covers, reading the backs of the boxes. It was a consistent part of the earlier 90’s for me.

DVDs replaced VHS tapes. Then Netflix came on the scene. At that time, they mailed the disks to you, so there was a wait, but you no longer had to leave your home. Despite the seemingly constant risk of the disks you received being too scratched up to watch, it was the new thing. After that came Redbox. Tiny red kiosks popped up in every grocery and convenience store. They were now in every McDonald’s. Redbox was inexpensive. Well, why would I go to Blockbuster now? I don’t have to. I barely have to get out of my car. I can return it to any other Redbox. Right about here is when Blockbuster hit the tipping point. Could they have been the ones to pop up little Blockbuster kiosks all over the place? They did try when they finally got the message, but it was too late. Currently I don’t even have a need for Redbox. Movies are streamed. I have subscriptions. We can pretty much watch whatever we want whenever we want. Although I just saw a Redbox today, what was the hot thing not so long ago is now not so hot.

This innovation in the entertainment industry benefited us, as a society. We obviously preferred it to the old way or it wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Although we may feel nostalgia for the way things used to be, we do not want to go back. There was a cost to this innovation. Many mom and pop video stores failed. The entire Blockbuster chain folded, employees lost their jobs. Communities lost an anchor business. Even further, the jobs of those who manufactured and distributed these products ended. Labor was replaced with technology. It’s sad to think of that industry becoming obsolete and yet – time marches on. Despite the human cost of it, as a society, we want it that way.

Creative Destruction happens in our personal lives as well. I only recently heard this term applied to life when a friend of mine commented that she was in a creative destruction cycle. It sounded more purposeful than my (seemingly) constant complaint of “I am being destroyed.” The addition of the word “creative” at least put some focus on a future that would benefit me in some way. It doesn’t feel like that, of course, when it happens to you. Optimistic. It simply feels like destruction. It is only in the after that we can appreciate the ways we adapted to our situation. How those things, in turn, propelled us into better ways of living.

I feel melancholy for the way my life was five years ago. In my memory, I was much younger. Youthful even, in my thinking. I had teenagers with teenage problems, but those proved easier to solve than the adult problems my children face now. I think of the close group of friends I had, the evenings we spent together laughing and talking. I remember the feeling of living in a city that I felt deeply connected to. My “life in the theater” was just beginning. When I look at pictures of myself from this time, I see what appears to be a healthy and happy woman. I had no indication, then, that a tumor was growing in my pancreas. That I was about to lose my health. That we would be making a multi-state move. That everything was about to start being dismantled, one piece at a time.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, to grow. Friendships sometimes strain or break. Jobs that once suited us no longer do. We may find it necessary to surrender our vices. While this sounds like a positive thing; it both is and is not. In the short term anyway. A decision to lose weight or stop drinking, for example, has a social price. These are things you may have enjoyed in group settings, with friends. Now you’re no fun anymore. You adapt. They adapt too. But it’s often uncomfortable in the in-between.

The process of Creative Destruction happens to us constantly. I don’t think I could pinpoint any time in my life that it wasn’t ongoing. Our lives are always doing this in smaller ways. Sometimes major changes happen consecutively or grouped together. These are the very significant ones. I have had two of these significant Creative Destruction cycles in my life. The times that took my life down to it’s most basic form and I was faced with rebuilding from there. It’s not just frightening when these major cycles take place, it is terrifying. You may lose so much in these times that you wonder if it will ever stop – if you ever will hit the bottom.

I once had enough time on my hands to come up with my 10 happiest moments in life. These were chosen for their purity, the clear ring of joy in them. I did not choose moments like my wedding day (I was very stressed and am rather ashamed of how self-centered I was) or the day I became a mother (actually the most brutal day of my life) because they were marred by other emotions that were negative. The moments I selected were free from those.

One was the day I graduated from college. I was 28 years old. I was married and 7 months pregnant for the first time. A child I was never supposed to have. It had taken me 10 years to earn my Bachelors degree. I ended up attending 3 different colleges. The last step of this journey was completed in night classes while I worked a full-time job. When I started college, at age 18, I put in no more effort than I had in High School. I put in only what I had to. The classes were more an annoyance to me than an opportunity to learn. I was frustrated by them. My second college, there was a spark of the love of learning. After this, I was employed full time at a high-stress job that I did not enjoy. I realized, during this time, this was going to be it for me if I didn’t go back to school. I wanted to have more options than this and I started at my third college. Here, I seemed to love every class. I looked forward to going. I got straight A’s. It meant something to me. I now had a desire to learn, and I did. I became pregnant after nearly 3 years of trying. The first time I felt this baby move was sitting in a class at that school. Graduation came. I walked into the auditorium with the rest of my graduating class. I passed by my husband and my parents, who were smiling and proud of me. I walked across the stage to get my diploma with my pregnant belly and felt like the whole world was ahead of me. I look now at my smile in my (obligatory) picture of receiving my diploma. I was beaming. I had not just done the minimum asked of me. I had put in for the long haul. I had learned so much.

I could never have had that moment if not for the nearly complete destruction of my life at age 22. The loss of my first college life, my first love, the naivete of my youth. I could not have had that moment had I not spent a year alone in a tiny unfurnished apartment that proved to me that I could take care of myself. I couldn’t have had that moment without the string of bad relationships I’d had. If I hadn’t said “I cannot do this to myself again. I must change. I must change the men I choose. I must change what I think I am worth.” I couldn’t have had that moment if I’d become pregnant when I wanted to; years prior. I couldn’t have had it without a husband who encouraged me to finish after we were married. I couldn’t have appreciated this moment had I not struggled so hard to achieve it.

I’m not a person that believes everything happens for a reason. I know this idea is a source of comfort for many people It is not for me. I do not believe the events of my life happened in order to justify some later end. Certain things happened to me completely by chance. Other things happened because I had (unknowingly) made poor choices. We sway to and fro as things happen to those around us by chance or by their choices. We are affected by these as well. Our lives are in constant flux, we are always in a reactionary state as our lives shift around us.

While I do not believe that everything happens for a reason, I do believe our true nature is revealed in these times. There are people who turn bitter in life. There are people who shut themselves away. There are those who are unable to move forward, continuing to make the same poor decisions again and again. Every life is not a story of strength and perseverance. I wish it were so – because everyone is deserving of this. It’s simply not the case, though.

There is not one area of my life that remained untouched in these past 5 years. Every part of who I am was subjected to this Creative Destruction cycle. The cost of it was great. I do not wish myself back to the way I was before. My new methods of living are better. My life is brighter. My friendships are more authentic. My love is purer. My resolve is stronger. My personality shines brighter. My vision is clearer. The ties that held me to my past have been broken. I am braver. I have shed a great deal of fear about my life. My health is much more guarded. I take less for granted. I have surrendered my destructive ways. I am thankful to be rid of them.

In the future, there will be a moment that I will count among my “10 Most Happy.” I will know, when it happens, that I could not have had it were it not for the struggles of these past 5 years. I will know it would not have been possible if I had remained where I was comfortable. If I had not had to struggle to regain my health. If I had not reached a point of having every bit of false pride stripped from me. Had I not been forced by to take a reckoning of my character, had my friendships not been tested. Had I not opened the Pandora’s Box of self-hatred and dealt with what was inside of it.

Without the prices we pay, the strength it takes to reach the other side of our mountains, the lessons we learn, the things we have to surrender in our journeys these moments are not possible. Not in that form, not with that timing, not with the gratitude with which we are able to recognize them in the first place.