From Youth to Adult; what we find, what we lose, what was always right there.

I remember in my youth as a young child, from 5 to 10 maybe, I looked at the world with such wide-open eyes.  Every day I would wonder what adventure lay ahead.  And back then, at that wonderful age, every day was an adventure to me.  No matter how big or little the day's events were, it was a day like no other. I can clearly remember how I would lay in my bed every night and reflect on my day, my adventurous day and wonder in anticipation of what tomorrow would bring. Back then, in those days of wonder, a day would seem to last forever, the hours passed by so very much slower. Why? Because we were so much more focused and all we had to think about was our own personal adventurous lives, ourselves. At that age, from inside, we truly felt different from anyone else and everyone else.  At that one time in our lives, we were truly in touch with our inner selves, and it just came naturally.

  Then comes the teen years, when all the questions about who we are, what we're supposed to be doing, and who were supposed to be.  This is when life start's spinning in circles, and we start losing touch with our inner selves we once knew so well. Don't get me wrong, the teenage years are still an adventurous part of youth.  But we become much more Self-conscience of everything we do and slowly, day by day, losing touch with the wide-eyed, so-focused individual from our innocent youth.  We lose our focus as we ask more and more questions and become more and more confused.  And in our growing confusion, days begin passing by faster and faster.  Losing, by throwing away, probably the only time of our lives when our life really belonged to only us.  Free to make choices or decisions that would affect only us.  The time when we were free to do whatever we chose to do.  The time to live without question of what our purpose in life is meant to be, a time to become the person you see in your imagination or wildest dreams.  For the only limits we have in our teens are the ones we create.

  Somehow, we find ourselves no longer able to Dream.  Instead on a quest, rather than an adventure, searching for understanding and meaning.  Trying to find answers to questions about our lives that we feel we just have to know.  Until we find ourselves as adults.  Many years gone from us, the whole time our eyes closed and how we got to where we now stand we have no idea.  Many years of our life, a mere blur, for life just grabbed hold of us and took control and we just let it go.  So overwhelmed, we look back on years we have been living with no concept of where all the time went. 

 The questions we once asked ourselves about tomorrow and who we would someday become, has now become a hiding, a haunting question we are now afraid to hear or face.  The question that now peaks around the corner of our mind in the quiet, calm of the night.  Who am I?  And who have I become?  What is missing in my life?  Where am I supposed to be in my life? Most of all, where has the person I once was, gone?  We reflect back onto who we once were and now ask ourselves who we have become.  We've become so wrapped up or involved in the life of an adult that we become blind to the life we once had known as a child.  Life has become too big for us to control, with work, marriage, children, finances, chores, and responsibilities.  We forget to take time to explore our inner selves, to seek out our deepest yearnings and keep our dreams alive.  Instead, we allow them to fade away and get lost in a life without personal meaning.

Once or twice in a lifetime, something may happen to us to once again open our eyes.  A death, an illness, a great painful loss of some kind, or something along those lines that disrupts our normal everyday way of life.  This causes us to open up our eyes and see things from a different perspective.  Where things that seemed so overwhelmingly important, suddenly become small or even meaningless.  It's times like these we hear long forgotten voices from inside reminding us how to once again appreciate what really matters in life.  These are times that give us an opportunity to realize there is a bigger picture in life and it’s not that hard to see it if and when we really look at it. All we have to do is, really look at it, right there in front of us, where it’s always been.

 

Timothy Britton 6/99