Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

The quotation frames personal development as inherently transitional: to expand one’s capacities or identity, one must accept a period of uncertainty. “Temporary surrender” suggests that security is not rejected forever but bracketed—set aside long enough to experiment, risk failure, and tolerate ambiguity while new skills, relationships, or self-understandings form. The statement also implies that clinging to safety can become a form of stagnation, because growth often requires stepping beyond established routines and social expectations. In Sheehy’s developmental lens, this is the psychological cost of moving from one life stage to another: the discomfort of the in-between is not a sign of error but a normal condition of change.