As my birthday approaches, I find myself pondering on what it means to be a “grown-up”.
When we think of growing, we can only imagine how painful, grueling, and even straight-up antagonizing it is. Sometimes we have to hurt in order to heal. To reprocess old wounds again, we would unlearn programmed patterns that weren’t benefitting us. By reliving it, we go through the ups and downs again and again. It may feel like going back to where you once started though I can only reassure you, that’s not the case despite how it seems.
Adults may act as if they got everything all “figured out” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We are all trying to discover meaning in this charade we call “life”. There are different stages to it and in every stage, either conscious or not, we play our part in it. Experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Even the way we meld ourselves to our environments, the people around us, society at large – they may very well be performances.
That being the case, wouldn’t the world as we know it to be an entire “act”?
Would we consider the actions of an individual to be an amalgamation of the “actor” they embody?
How do we express the truth that is “us”?
By next Monday, a quarter of my life would have elapsed. From that point on, I’d like to reset myself to a point where I’m able to jumpstart my childhood dreams and plant that into my reality. In the next world, I imagine that I’m liberated enough to create on my terms without the restrictions of how other adults want me to be. Even if I’m 25 years old, I’m not going to forget the aspirations I had when I was young. A peaceful life with true friends who love me and I love them back. That’s not too much to ask for, right?
Even if the future that’s envisioned for me isn’t promised, I take note of the times when my mind may trick me into believing that there is no tomorrow. Regardless, I try to remind myself that there is today. Every memory that flashes by is a moment that can’t be taken back. The “present” is encoded and embedded into every fiber of us. We are the gift. So as long as we continue to embrace what we currently have, it’s understood that concepts of time and space are only perceived limitations. Most we can do is continue to move forward. The rest is merely history.