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Time. (Part One)
The Human Cycle.
Oh how we have changed. Us children of a golden age. An age where the days were always sunny and we would always remain young.
Creations of our parents we were. Grown to rebelliousness and a new herd mentality we called our own. We were unstoppable, nothing was impossible, we had an entire lifetime ahead of us and the world at our feet to pave our way.
And now we are our parents.
Looking at photos of my generation and photos of our parents- is like looking into a lens that distorts time. And shows us a mirror image.
I remember a day in summer in my first year of high school. Some friends came round. And while we laughed and messed about in the backyard, my father came out to get something from the shed. And when he went back inside, my friends asked me why he wasn't wearing shorts on such a hot day. What could I say? I didn't know the answer, and never dreamed that grown ups preferred trousers to "childish" shorts if at all possible.
And today I saw a picture of one of those young boys who asked me that. Outside in the back yard with his young child, wearing pants on a hot day.
How he had grown. How he had changed. He used to be smaller than the other kids and took on the role of class clown to avoid being bullied. Now looking at that picture, he was a responsible parent and looked so large next to his child. So changed.
But I still remember that day, hot and sunny and so full of excitement, like all days back then. When everything was new and fun and fresh as the cut grass my dad had mown in his long pants. And that little guy who was always smiling, joking about, like he would forever be a little boy.
Why these memories now? Why these strange thoughts?
I've been looking on facebook and a site for my old highschool. I feel so much confusion seeing pictures of all these "adults" who were once like the boys who came to visit me in my backyard all those years ago. All those troublesome teenagers, those rock throwing, spitting malcontents, those bullies, teachers pets, nerds, jocks, class clowns, princesses, sluts, popular kids, and loners- cannot be distinguished from the pictures of the teachers who taught us back then.
The teachers who were so OLD and so strict and so much the enemy to us. The ones who stood for authority, order, discipline; while we in our need to distinguish ourselves from our parents, stood for rebellion, and everything opposite to what adults stood for.
Now. I cant see the difference.
The friends and classmates from those years, so grown up I hardly recognize them. Their faces changed so much; lines from years of being an adult and the stress that comes with it, fat from living too good a lifestyle, and a general change that I cant quite place.
Perhaps its in their eyes. Their eyes- the only thing truly recognizable in all these people- have lost their spark, that inner fire of youth and childhood. Replaced by a hidden bitterness. A disappointment that their lives didn't turn out how they had planned when they thought with the minds of immortal teenagers. And though they try to hide it with smiles and the superficial trappings of success- I can see it. I can see their inner child has died. And they are now the very adults they rebelled against so many years ago.
And I wonder if the children of today see us as we saw our teachers and our parents.
And I hope the inner fire that I still feel hot in my heart still emanates from my eyes. I hope the disappointments that life gives to all who ever dreamed does not lurk in the windows to my soul.
For the time from child to teenager to adulthood passed by so fast. I missed it in the blink of a fiery eye.
"When I was a child I flew! Then as an adult- I watched others soar."
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glad you found the key to get out. tchin~