Should Have Slowed Down

Senior year, almost done and look how far we have come. I remember being so young and being ridiculously anxious to grow up, cause I hated all my parents rules. Like, why couldn’t I ride my bike futher than one hundred feet down the street? Why couldn’t I walk to the playground by myself? Or sleepover my friends house’s on school nights? And seriously, what was up with 8pm bed times when I was 10! Man did I hate being treated like a baby, always being like “come on mom, I’m not a little kid anymore!” Gosh did I hate all those stupid rules, until I look back now.

Oh what I would do to rewind time and go back to being a kid with no responsibilities or worries. I remember when adults used to say that I should slow down and not try to grow up so fast, but what did they know, they just want to keep me a baby forever is what I thought. Until now, I realize that they were right, I should have stepped back and slowed down because growing up isn’t as fun as I thought it would be. Yeah, the freedoms nice and all but god do I wish I had naptime still, and I sure as hell wish my biggest problems in life involved keeping boy cooties away, because ew right?

Here we are, graduating, going to college, or off into the workplace, or into the military, no turning back now. As we are ending a huge chapter in life, we are finally realizing how fast time really did fly by us, within the blink of an eye we grew up and are 18, official adults. We didn’t listen to their warnings, we didn’t slow down, we tried to grow up too fast and now we look back and miss the simplicity of life.

Then I think again, it’s just going to get harder, that this is just a beginning and I’m done looking to the future for answers, and hoping to grow up faster and experience everything that older people get to. “Well, we’re always thinking that someday we’ll be happy. You know, we’ll get that car or that job or that person in our lives that’ll fix everything. But happiness is a mood, and it’s a condition, not a destination. It’s like being tired or hungry. It’s not permanent. It comes and goes, and that’s okay. And I feel like if people thought of it that way, they’d find happiness a lot more often.” This is literally the best quote I’ve ever read, it’s honest and true. Life is full of ups and downs, and material objects are not going to fix our struggles or hardships.

Live for today, find the simple happiness and pleasures in life because we only have so long, and as we’ve seen, time flies by. One day we will be old and in our 80’s and I personally want to be able to look back on my life and be happy with the things I did and the adventures I got to experience.