“I won’t grow up! No, I promise that I won’t! I will stay a boy forever, and be banished if I don’t,” Peter Pan said to the lost boys.
As children, we have all enjoyed and related to the Disney movie Peter Pan. Like Peter, we all want to be children and leave all the responsibility of adulthood in the dust.
When were little, we loved to go off into our own little worlds, playing dress up and acting as a child should. We often got away with things that we can’t get away with now.
“It was easy to escape the blame,” Junior Lauren Cameron said. “I would pull the cute card when all of my siblings got in trouble.”
Many of us also used this tactic of defense. As children, we yearned for the day when we would be no longer held accountable for our actions. Now we understand all the advantages we held in the early stages of our life.
Most of us also took advantage of the little things that we can barely enjoy anymore.
“I took advantage of bedtime,” Freshman Aiza Sied said. “I thought the later you stayed up, the cooler you were, and now I don’t get enough sleep.”
Most of us also took the amount of school work we had for granted. As we mature, we have many more expectations and aren’t able to enjoy homework-free weekends anymore.
Despite our later understanding, when we were younger, we all wanted to be older and grow up to be just like our role models.
Once we have experienced the grown up world, we no longer want to carry the burdens of adult life.
Cameron explained that she looked forward to the independence of being grown up.
That was the main reason we all wanted to be older. We all wanted to be able to control our own lives and be in charge of ourselves.
“Growing up, I was always focused on getting older,” Cameron said. “Wanting to do this and that when I’m 10 and in double digits.”
As children our main focus was growing up and achieving the exciting adventures our lives hold. Once we are older, we begin to understand that being double digits or being able to drive may not have exactly turned out in the way we imagined it.
“I thought when I am 10 I will be cool,” Cameron said. “I’d think that when I got to one age, then I would feel like a big kid, and I just kept thinking it was older and older. Even now I don’t see myself as a big kid at 16.”
We all look forward to the moment when we get our driver’s license and are home free on the open road with no one to nag us.
Later we find that while driving is fun, we often have to drive around running errands for our parents.
Living in the now is very important and if you don›t, you tend to miss the little things.
“If you’re too worried about the future then you are missing out on opportunities to enjoy the moment,” English teacher Steve Krueger said. “The future is very unpredictable, and you never know how much future there is. In that regard, it would be unfortunate to be so focused on the future, that you miss out on the other things in life. You discover that the future isn’t as long or isn’t what you wanted it to be.”
We see that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Even though we expect growing up to be an amazing experience, it may not have turned out as most of us had anticipated. Though at the same time, as children we didn’t especially love that era of our lives either, even though when we look back on it now, it seems like a paradise.
“The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment,” said Lauren Kate, author of the novel Fallen.
The best thing to do is to live in the moment and to appreciate what we have now because things won’t stay that way forever.
