I spent some time with friends recently where we shared childhood memories.
I am still that person from the stories – The way my eyes crinkle when I smile. My voracious appetite to learn. My passion for animals. My love of God.
But I am also that person no longer. I have grown beyond that insecure, boundary-less, naive young human. I have set down most of my black and white ideas. I have tasted more sorrow than I wish, I have learned and forgotten gigabytes of information.
In sharing those childhood experiences, I realize anew how they informed many of the values I now hold – some by example of what to aspire to, and others by example of what not to repeat. I left the evening rather pensive, thinking of the girl who is no longer, and yet, still is.
She is both encouraged by the distance traveled and wistful of the difficult roads involuntarily taken along the way. The path to adulthood is so much more arduous than one ever imagines as a child.