Tag

growing up

New Year’s

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I dislike all of the hoopla around New Year’s. I’ve never enjoyed the forced partying of New Year’s Eve. Everywhere I go, the question is, “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?!” When I was in high school and college, and didn’t embrace my quirky and true self, I would desperately work with my friends to create a fabulous party, where there would be guys and girls and lots of alcohol. Just so I had stories to share after. Just so I didn’t feel “left out.” Left out from what, I don’t really know. But I desperately wanted to do everything everyone else was doing, so that I belonged. No, so that I FELT as though I belonged. Whether or not I did was moot.

So there was that.

I dislike how New Year’s forces everyone to talk about the passage of time, something that already stresses me out enough as it is. I know that days are slipping away faster than I can hold onto them; I don’t need an entire 24 hours devoted to that.

But most of all, I dislike the idea of “resolutions.” I believe in goal-setting. But I hate how everyone waits until January 1st to try to better themselves. Anyone can make a change in their life at any moment of any day. Waiting until the new year seems like a cop-out. And more than that, it sets us up for failure. Inevitably, come February, people already start talking about how they broke their resolutions, so they’ll just have to wait until the next year. WHY?

The moment is now. The time is here. Do it now. Time is precious and there is little to waste. If something needs to be changed, altered, spoken, or created, do it now.

Adult friendship drama

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I was talking with a friend yesterday who was feeling incredibly saddened by a recent shift in his friendships. A tightly-knit group had “split,” so to speak, into three tightly-knit people with the other two on the periphery. He said, “I feel like there’s something wrong with me–what did I do to not make them want to be as close with me anymore?” I was struck by how similar his thought process was to mine (instantly jumping to the conclusions that it’s something wrong with YOU, not remembering that there are two people in a relationship so the issue could very well lie with the other person).

He then followed up by talking about how these other three write on each other’s Facebook walls all the time, about their inside jokes and plans, and how he feels very much an outsider when watching all of this without being a part of it. That REALLY made me think, because his comments sounded very much like those of the middle-schoolers that I work with. That is not to say that I viewed him as being immature, or his sadness as unimportant; but more to say that issues going on when we are young still creep up into adulthood. He is 23 years old and Facebook is still presenting problems for him. He still feels left out. That makes me really sad. Maybe that’s because I partly understand it; it’s easy for me to jump to conclusions upon reading something on Facebook or Twitter that I’m not a part of. It just made me think a lot; we tell our middle-schoolers and high-schoolers that these issues “get better” when they grow up, and in a lot of ways that’s true; there’s much less petty gossip, bullying, and deliberate attempts to induce jealousy. But it’s all still there, even if to a lesser degree. Even if it’s to a less deliberate degree, which in many ways, is significantly harder to deal with.

The thing is, which I’m realizing more and more each day, it’s really up to us to make things how we want them. If there are issues, waiting around until they magically resolve themselves just doesn’t work. We’ll be waiting a long time.

Simplicity of childhood

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I spent so much of my childhood wanting to “grow up.” I’m still working on figuring out why that was. Partly, all of the older people in my life (older cousins, teachers, etc.) seemed so glamorous and magical. I wanted to be like them. And part of me, especially in my older childhood, felt like when I “grew up,” things would get easier. I didn’t realize how wrong that was, but that’s another topic.

I wanted freedom, wanted to make all my own decisions, wanted to have responsibilities. Rightfully so; most children yearn for those things. But now that I am “a grown up,” I find myself yearning desperately for the days of childhood. I see the kids I work with in elementary school who sit in the same chair each day, who are told when to to to lunch and recess, who are told “Re-do it and bring it in tomorrow, don’t worry” when they incorrectly do their homework, who have teachers and guidance counselors and therapists watching out for their every move, whose big excitement is getting a new pack of colored pencils to use for a social studies map-coloring lesson. And oh, how I miss that. I never realized how lucky children are to not have to make decisions, to be taken care of, to be carried around, figuratively speaking, by adults.

I wish I hadn’t given up playing with dolls because it wasn’t what “older kids did.” I wish a new toy still made me feel elated inside. I wish that rainy days meant a day snuggling in the cozy house, baking cookies with my family, and lying on my stomach on the floor, playing board games. I wish that I could still build forts. I wish I still believed that imaginary friends existed.

I miss it all.

And I think that’s a large part of the reason that I so thrive on working with children. When I’m with them, I get to act like them. I get to be childlike. I get to do all of those things. I get to nurture that little-me that’s still inside of me.