What growing costs

A young jam maker in Fayoum sells at a weekly market, from a folding table, to people who know her by name. She wants to be on shelves in Cairo, and she is probably right to.

What nobody mentions when they talk about growth is the list of things she will stop doing. The table. The Friday mornings. The customer who tastes every new batch and tells her honestly what is wrong with it. The freedom to change the recipe on a whim, because a shop buyer will want the same jar every time.

Every step forward has a goodbye folded inside it. A new job means leaving the old one. A new market means less time for the first. A brand that wants to be known across the country has to stop being one town's secret. We prefer to talk about what we are gaining, and we tend to act as if the leaving will take care of itself.

It does not. Endings nobody planned are messy. The regulars feel dropped. The habits that made the thing good disappear without anyone deciding to let them go. The maker is caught off guard by a sadness she never expected to feel about a folding table.

The better way is to look at it plainly at the start. Whatever begins now will probably end one day, and so will some of what came before it. Decide what you are leaving, tell the people it affects, and keep what truly matters on purpose rather than by luck.

Growth always comes with goodbyes. Knowing that in advance is how you say them properly.