Monday, October 12, 2009

Visiting Home

Age is such a funny thing. As an obsessive people-watcher, I find age fascinating. How do we change so much? How do we learn so much? How do we stay so the same? It's a constant, and yet a variable.

I like to watch kids. Especially the age right when they start talking but before they go to school. You can see so much life in their eyes. The people-watcher inside me finds a strong interest in riding the bus (now that I've learned how to properly catch the right one). The other day there must have been 20 children on this bus, and on campus it's rare to see just one or two at a time. I couldn't help but just watch them. I could see them older, envisioning each of their lives ahead of them. It's such a cruel world for such innocent things. Yet there is so much joy; I hope they find it.

I'm the same way with older people. What do they know? What have they seen? Why can't we ask? Their eyes tell their stories as strongly as the youngsters.

Visiting home makes me think a lot about age. Where I've been, where I'm going. It's so fast. Everyone warns you it's fast, but you don't really know it until you turn around. I see my childhood on these walls. I feel incredibly connected and incredibly disconnected to it. I can't touch it or hear it or taste it. I can see it in photographs, but i can't really see it. It's gone. Depressing? A tad. But in all reality this is what I've been waiting for my entire life. We talk about "growing up". I'm here. I'm growing up now. I'm at the genesis of the best years of my life. What do I do now? Live? It sounds so easy, but it's so confusing sometimes. Things never go the way you expect them to. I'm excited yes, but it's such a whirlwind, you never know if you are doing the right thing. But nobody really ever knows. Except for the youngsters. When you are 3 and wearing your ballet tutu, you just are happy. You're just living.

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