Some growth looks like needing a simpler answer to an old question.

Complexity is often where thinking starts rather than where it ends. In the middle of learning something, the honest position is complicated, full of conditions and exceptions. Later, if you keep going, the answer can get shorter again, not because you know less but because you have found what actually matters.

When you notice yourself wanting a plainer answer to something you used to argue about at length, take it seriously rather than as a loss of rigor. Try writing your current view in two sentences. If it holds, you have probably understood something. If it collapses, the complexity was doing real work and you have learned that too.