What do you want to be when you grow up? Where do you want to live? How about college? What college do you want to go too?
I’ve had adults ask me these questions more times than I can count. I was five years old the first time they asked, and 15 the last time. It’s a question that we idealize for all of our young lives. It sets us up for college and the kind of job we’re going to have in the future. Time passes as if in an instant, and somehow in the blink of an eye, I’ve gone from worrying about who I was going to play with at recess to how am I going to improve my portfolio so I can get into a good college.
I’m at the end of my sophomore year, and these things have become increasingly obvious to me lately. I’ll be making these decisions for myself in just a year. Twenty years from now, I’ll either praise or regret the decisions I will make in the next two. Time is creeping up on me, and as the days whirl past, I can’t help but feel I’m stuck in time itself. I’m frozen, but everyone around me is moving forward.
As people, we often take time for granted. It’s imaginary, a social construct that we’ve developed to form a structure for society. Our entire world (and lives, it seems) runs on an intangible concept we have invented. We set times to wake up, to eat, to have events. Despite this, time fluctuates. If you’re looking forward to something at the end of a hard day, the day will feel as though it will never end. If you’re dreading something, time moves much faster. When our mental health is at its lowest, time pushes against us. It begins to feel like the world is working against you.
In these moments, we forget that we are kids. We spend so much of that time thinking about the future that we forget to live in the present. Kids today are so determined to grow up fast. You see them on the internet, and you see them going about doing the things we do now as teenagers. It saddens me. We have become so fixated on adulthood and what it is to be mature that we give up the only time we have to make mistakes and become our own individuals. Sometimes it’s okay to remind yourself to just be a kid. Take breaks, let yourself be silly and goofy. Run around outside, play with your toys; you won’t have them forever. People only live once. Make use of the time you have to be a kid. You only get it once. If you rush into becoming something you aren’t ready to be, time will begin to plummet.
I think it’s important we recognize moments like these in our lives, moments where we are so stuck that we aren’t sure how to get ourselves out. Every day we are faced with a new door. This door will either change the course of your life or keep you on the same path. These moments can define who we become as people. When you find yourself lost, and unsure where to go, take the time to remember you don’t have to get to the end of your childhood right now. Take the time to live. If you do, you might be able to get time moving the way you want again.
