Masuk Free Press

The world looks more gray out there. Have you ever noticed? There is a certain dullness to the colors outside that did not used to be there. I have such stark memories of a brilliantly colored sky, jewel-toned grass and the crystal clashing of water in a stream. But I look out the window and it just does not feel the same. Even the sounds feel muffled when I walk outside. I could never understand why.

We spend our whole childhood wishing to grow up, waiting to graduate and move on, to do everything we have ever dreamed of. But here, in this moment, how many of you find yourselves wishing you could go back? Listen to the coo of the mourning dove as you wake up on your birthday, when you used to love it. Head up the hill, baby brother in tow, to spend the day outside with the girls you pretend are your sisters.

Growing up is not everything we dreamed of. The freedom we longed for ended up feeling more like prison, each day a carbon copy of the one before. We learned that freedom is not stagnant; it has different meanings to different people, and it all depends on time. 

When we were young, freedom was 16, a car and the ability to travel classes without a line leader. Now, with 16 in the rearview mirror, freedom looks brand new. To some, it is being set loose from school, the whole world at their feet. Others, the open door that is the very ability to choose what path your life takes next.

For me, freedom is an open window, floating with the breeze, taking me where it will. Freedom is a notebook, pen and open fields full of unsaid words finally said, where once I thought it was already within my grasp. 

The change is what unsettles me the most. Perhaps I expect less from life, and maybe that is why we feel unfulfilled at the end of each day when the sun hits the horizon.

Society as we know it is a gold encrusted cage. It pulls your focus as a welcoming place from far away, but up close you can see the patches of rust keeping the light from glinting inwards. The way you think, talk, breathe, it is all determined by the standards of our surroundings, by the people in positions of “power”. If I think high school dating is a mistake I am breaking the mold, expanding to unexplored places where everything feels wrong simply because it is different than the majority. 

But it may be our very refusal to be different that makes us so unhappy. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”, meaning the individual must accept themselves as they are — rather than altering to suit others — in order to reach their full potential. To stay true to your faults is to be everything you are meant to be.

That potential is whatever you make it. If you believe you are meant for more, then you are. If you put yourself inside a box, that is where you will stay until your perspective changes.

I am of the firm belief that the past shapes the future. Everything that happens to human beings is a precursor to everything that follows. Perspective of the past gives birth to perspective of the future.

In accepting this, or not accepting as the case may be, you determine the course of your life. Your future, you “grown up”, is essentially created by everything you were in the past. The little girls catching and helping a caterpillar they named the BFG, become empathic women connected to the people around them, dedicated to their success. The older siblings reading Harry Potter become adults who view the world responsibly and unapologetically.

Every version of ourselves from one moment in time sets the course for the following version of us. As John Green explains in his nonfiction debut, The Anthropocene Reviewed, we are a culmination of every version of ourselves to exist at any given moment.

Because of this, growing up, especially around the time of middle school and high school, is a very confusing time. In deciding who you want to be, you get caught up in expectations, as well as the thoughts and actions of the people around you. 

Maintaining your individuality is the most important part of growing up, but also, unfortunately, the biggest casualty. 

I have been very lucky to have a perennial lack of concern for other people’s opinions of me. I truly feel that one person’s disdain for my bookish persona does not dictate who I must become. But I have grown up next to people who changed their entire personalities in an attempt to be whatever or whomever they thought they were supposed to be. 

This idea of “supposed” is the most dangerous thinking trap of all; there is no “supposed” in any facet of your life. It is an illusion created by fear.

I suspect this is the reason why so many kids today grow up faster than they may have 20 years ago. With the rise of infinite communication there is infinite access to the lives of others, all leading us to the conclusions of what life is, again, “supposed” to look like. Not to mention the growing population with family issues that encourage kids to think they “have” to grow up before their time. 

The problem with this is that we, in a time period we will one day be the rulers of, must determine who we will be for ourselves, without interference from outside influences. It is up to the children we used to be, and are, to grow to be worthwhile.

So as we continue this growth beyond high school, as seniors will now experience, it is up to us to decide who we will become, and how these people inside us will leave their mark on the world.