Sometimes, selling out is giving up...

People talk of their twenties like it was some magical decade of freedom and carefree celebration, and I’m certain that for some people, it actually felt this way. Still, they seem to glaze over the struggle that is learning to grow up, to become an individual, to become someone new, and simultaneously, to retain the parts of yourself that are integral to who you are, to attempt to preserve your joy, your kindness, your softness, and your innocence, all in the face of the terrible force and reality of the world. Much of what we are, what we believe, what we see in ourselves, is sacrificed during these formative years. Our childhood facades are crushed beneath the wheel of time, irretrievably, and seldom mourned in the moment. Later we realize that these were truly egregious concessions, which traded away pieces of who we were in the depths of our hearts. Later, we realize what we’ve lost. 

Contrary to the ambitions of most people around me, to be the versions of themselves which least resemble the person they’ve tried to outgrow, I strive every day to be more like who I was when I was 8 years old. This is not to say that I aspire to be a selfish, myopic child, but rather, that I aspire to cultivate the bottomless hope, creativity, kindness, and idealism which I held as entirely intrinsic to my very being as a child. To regain a forgotten mentality, which could not conceive of impossibility, or apathy, or bear for one second the thought of giving up. I am resolved not to give up on the values of that version of myself.

If we all attempted to remember, and to honor, the standards that we’ve slowly conceded to the massive pressures of the world before us, perhaps we could create a world, and a community, with better standards of living. We have come to accept defeat in so many forms as adults, and even to normalize it. The pursuit of our dreams is replaced by the pursuit of dollar signs, and we sell ourselves every day. Everything pure and passionate is traded away, or dismissed, for a spike in profitability. Tiny concessions give way to a creeping avalanche, and before we know it, the eight-year-old version of ourselves is lost within us, if not entirely erased. We wake up to a world that seems to be irreparably off-course from the world we dreamed of as children. Everything is broken, and corrupted, and we feel there is nothing to be done about it. How far we have fallen by the time we reach adulthood. How pitiful we would seem to our younger selves.

Now, more than ever, we must stop giving up on our dreams. We must stop giving up on ourselves, on each other. A new world is built every day, by the thoughts, words, and actions of all of us together. If we want to create something better, we can. Nothing is impossible, especially if we can finally start learning to work together. We cannot continue to be defined by the mistakes of our past, but instead, should rise above the small thinking that led us there in the first place. We can fix things, we can make them better. Let’s all stop trying to grow up and forget who we used to be when we had hope and imagination. Let’s all strive to be more like the person we were in our childhood, to expect more from ourselves, and from the world.