Do you ever get the feeling that you are doing the same things over and over and over and over again? Your life becomes an epic battle to stay away from change because change is hard and it's unpredictable, so you resist it.
Curiously enough, the only way to break yourself from a life of redundancy is to accept change, to not try to fight it, because in the end, we do get older, our lives do change, and once you hit your 20's this realization comes barreling head first into your mind. It racks at your brain, and all of a sudden you start romanticizing the past. The days when your only worries were watching the next re-run of Rugrats and making sure you hid the Dunkaroo's from your brother so he couldn't get the last pack.
Nostalgia is great, but it's also a trap, because we tend to forget the things we didn't like about being a kid. The rules, waking up painfully early to catch the bus, the rules. We forget that we had no freedom, it was merely a dream. We longed for the day when mom and dad wouldn't be able to tell us that we CAN'T do that. And until that point, the gleam of rebellion shone red and bright in our eyes.
These days, I find myself falling victim to grandiose memories of simpler times, but can we honestly say that as a kid things were simple?
Speaking from personal experience, my childhood was happy but trying. I broke the rules and made my parents' life a living hell for the better half of my youth. I won't go into details of all the familial terrorism I bestowed upon my kinfolk, but I will say that to this day, I'm still surprised at how much love and support they offered me despite all of my immature and just plain dumb misdeeds.
And that brings up another point: Wishing to be a kid again is a wish for ignorance. What's that saying? Ignorance is bliss? In a way, I agree. To unlearn everything I've learned over the past 10 years would take a big weight off of my shoulders. All of the things I've seen and experienced, and that one moment I had after I graduated high school and came to terms with my mortality-- Oh to be invincible for just one more day.
But as euphoric as I'm sure I'd feel, I'd also be losing sight of something that's more important than youth, or play time, or those chocolate cupcakes that look like mud with green and white gummy worms sticking out of them (yumm!)-- I'd be losing sight of the things that really matter in this world. Family, friends, forgiveness, altruism-- love.
Obviously I'm recounting my childhood only through distant memories, but I don't think children can really appreciate any of these things because they are faultlessly self-absorbed. They are learning the basics, and I don't know if I'd want to give everything up and learn it all over again.
I appreciate childhood for what it stands for, and it is a moment in time that is brief, but something that you can always think back to to make yourself smile. But, I made a decision a while back to embrace change, and to keep learning, so I guess that's what I'll do until the end because, well, that's really all we can do.
But if I ever came across one of those fancy schmancy hot tub time machine's, I can't say I wouldn't be curious. Though I'd probably go back to the 50s or 60s-- catching Miles Davis live and in his element . . . is it possible to be nostalgic about a time period before you were born. Damn. I might have just discredited all of the above.
Forgive me. I'm still learning.
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