We are all moving—quietly, constantly—from one self into another. The child becomes the youth, who becomes the adult, who becomes the elder. None of these selves is final; each is a passing chapter in a book we’re still writing. We carry the echoes of who we were, even as new versions of us take shape in ways we don’t always notice until we look back.

When we remember that everyone around us is also in transition, it softens the sharp edges of judgment. That impatient coworker may be in the midst of grief. The friend who drifts away might be becoming someone who needs different things. Even the stranger who irritates us is just another human mid-stride between yesterday and tomorrow.

And yet, in our rush to assess others, we often ignore the same traits within ourselves. We condemn the stubbornness we, too, have clung to. We criticize the fear we’ve also felt. It’s easier to see another’s flaws than to face our own reflection—but the truth is, the mirror works both ways.

If we accepted that each of us is a work in progress—unfinished, changing, and, yes, flawed—perhaps we’d be slower to judge and quicker to understand. After all, the same tide that carries them forward is carrying us, too. None of us is fixed. We are all, in our own way, still becoming.