Loyalty doesn't mean staying forever.
I read something on a dear friend's post this morning that really made me think. (Thank you, Zoe) There was a lot of wisdom in what she shared, but one sentence in particular has been bouncing around in my head ever since: "Loyalty doesn't mean staying somewhere forever."
WOW! Words so simple, yet there was a whole lot packed into that short little sentence.
I've always considered loyalty one of the most important qualities a person can have. I value it tremendously in friendships, relationships, family, and in business. I work hard to be loyal to the people in my life, and I tend to surround myself with people who feel the same way. Brad is very much the same way.
The more I thought about it this morning, though, the more I wondered whether we sometimes misunderstand what loyalty actually means. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have connected loyalty with longevity. If you've been somewhere for a long time, you stay. If someone has been in your life forever, you keep them there. If a company gave you an opportunity ten years ago, you somehow ow them the next ten years. Leaving becomes synonymous with abandoning, and choosing something different can feel a bit too much like betrayal.
Except...why!?
Is a woman loyal because she stays in an abusive relationship? Is an employee loyal because they stay in a toxic work environment that is slowly destroying their confidence and happiness? Is a friend loyal because they continue accepting behavior they would never encourage someone else to tolerate? Is someone loyal because they keep giving to a relationship, organization, job, or partnership long after it stopped giving anything back?
Personally, I don't believe it is. In fact, I'm starting to think some of the things we've traditionally called loyalty aren't loyalty at all. Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's guilt, obligation, comfort, history, or simply resistance to change. We've simply given them a more honorable name. "Loyalty"
There is certainly something admirable about sticking around when things get hard. Relationships aren't disposable. Careers won't always be fulfilling. Friendships go through seasons, businesses change, people make mistakes, and anyone who bolts at the first sign of discomfort will probably spend a lot of their lives running. Commitment matters a great deal, and loyalty absolutely includes working through things when they're worth working through.
There is, however, a difference between working through a difficult season and remaining somewhere simply because you've already invested a lot of time there. History deserves respect, but it doesn't necessarily deserve control over the future.
I think we've been looking at loyalty from the wrong direction.
Perhaps loyalty isn't measured by how long someone stays. Maybe it's better measured by how they behave while they're there, and even by how they behave when it's time to leave. You can be incredibly grateful for an opportunity while recognizing you've outgrown it. You can love someone and recognize you're no longer healthy together. You can appreciate everything a friendship once brought into your life while accepting it belongs to a passed chapter. You can leave a job, partnership, organization, community, or even a place without diminishing everything it meant to you while you were there.
The other side of this may be even more important. If we truly care about the people in our lives, shouldn't our loyalty to them include supporting their growth, even when their growth takes them somewhere else?
That's where this gets uncomfortable. It's easy to support someone's dreams when those dreams don't affect us. It's harder when a great employee accepts another opportunity, a close friend moves away, a child leaves home, a business partner changes direction, or someone we love makes a decision we wouldn't make ourselves. Our first reaction can be to focus on what their decision means for us instead of what it might mean for them.
Maybe real loyalty looks a lot less like "How could you leave?" and more like "I'm excited to see where this takes you."
That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean we can't be disappointed, sad, scared, frustrated, or even completely caught off guard. We are human. We can feel all those things while still wanting what is best for someone we care about.
I've been fortunate to have people in my life who have loved and supported me through a lot of different versions of myself. I've changed careers, taken risks, changed my mind, pursued some fairly crazy ideas, failed at things, succeeded at others, and evolved in ways I certainly couldn't have predicted twenty years ago. The people I consider truly loyal aren't the ones who expected me to remain the person I was when we met. Instead, they're the ones who gave me room to become the person I was becoming. I hope I've done the same for them.
If we're lucky, life is long. Expecting people to remain at the same job, relationship, role, place, or version of themselves forever seems like a pretty strange way to love them. Growth almost always requires change, and change occasionally requires leaving something behind. None of that erases what came before.
I think that's what struck me most about those words this morning. Loyalty doesn't mean staying somewhere forever. It means honoring what something meant, appreciating what it gave you, treating people well, and knowing when it's time to support the next chapter...whether it's yours or someone else's.
Sometimes the most loyal thing we can do is stay and fight for something worth keeping. 100% Other times, it is having enough respect for ourselves, and for the people we care about, to know when it is time to let go and let growth happen.
