At 20 years old I am no less child than I was when I was 19, and no less child than when I was 16... I learnt that no 20 year old is grown up, meaning no 19 year old is either.
Growing cold is growing old, but being young is being me. Soon I’ll be 21, and I’ll be no less child than when I was 20. I’ll only be 6 more months worth of choices, 182 more days of choosing to be me. We grow older, colder, and love to label. Categorize and strip away magic and love from what is supposed to be admired.
I could do it. I could be the greatest grown up one could be, I could be the multi-million dollar enterprise CEO, and I definitely could be the emperor of Rome. But then I’d be just a 30 year old child who chose to not admire magic and love for 10 years. Is that life then? The endless pursuit of greater numbers? More thorough categories? It sounds silly to say out loud doesn’t it, when you put it that way.
What could be more valuable than a soul anyways? Alexander the Great in all his glory said if he could be any man besides himself he would be Diogenes the simple man, and Diogenes replied “And if I were not Diogenes, I too would wish to be Diogenes.” So is a competitive child an insecure child? Is that all competition is? Were we always trying to prove to ourselves that we’re worth something? At 20 and a half years old the only difference between me and my younger self is that I know more, I stand a bit taller, speak with slightly more accuracy, and hold firmer to the truth. But you’d think there would be more of a difference after all these long years. But no, I’m sat next to a 40 something year old child right next to me on my left, I bet he thinks the same thing. “I should be a lot farther in life than sat at a coffee shop next to this 20 year old child typing on his computer in the same way I am.” and here I am thinking “This 40 year old child is doing the same thing I am at this same coffee shop drinking the same coffee and he has had 7305 more days worth of choices made over me!” Hahahahaha what a silly life this is.
He was promised more than what he could ever achieve, that if he would hit silly buttons on his laptop for the next few thousand days then he would be “further” in life compared to his current self. Well, he’s here, next to me, 7000 days worth of choices later, in the same shop as me. What would I do with 7000 days worth of choices? Well I certainly wouldn’t want to make 7000 days worth of bad choices, and I certainly don’t want to waste 7000 days, so I guess for the next 7000 days I’ll choose to be me. And then at 40 years old I’ll be no less child than when I was 20 and a half years old, instead I’ll probably be wiser and hopefully more loving than I am now.
I’ll teach my children how to be children, how to talk to the bigger kids and ignore their promises that tell them they can be more than they actually would be able to achieve. I’d teach them there is magic and love in both the explainable and unexplainable, and that funny buttons don’t get you farther, because no matter how far you go you’ll end up exactly where you started anyways. The world is round afterall.
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