so yesterday was my 24th birthday.... weird. i was bummed that i didn't get to see my family or big bears but josh and nadia really made it special for me. oh ya and the hundreds of phone calls in the morning were cool too. every year on the morning of my birthday my mom would play this birthday song on the stereo. it is called "happy birthday baby" or something. like a country song. she would turn it way up and come into my room, as i was waking up, singing it too me. well yesterday morning, sure enough, i get a message of my mother singing... "happy, happy birthday baby" it was so cool. it became even cooler when i found out that she did it in the middle of her office at work and gave every one a good laugh! what a cool mom!
so many people remembered too. i was impressed. so to you guys that remembered, thank you so much. to you guys that didn't, don't bother ever talking to me again! hahaha no just joking i really am cool with that stuff.
so i was thinking yesterday about how when we are younger we always want to be older. we played house, or amy and did all these things that were no more than everyday adult life. when you are in seventh grade you can't wait to be an eighth grader and then you can't wait to get into high school. then from high school you look forward to your college years and living on your own. i think this age that we are at now is a very odd place to be. i've experienced most everything that i used to dream about when i was younger and now there is no part of the future that i really dream about or even look forward too. i mean there is marriage and kids but for me that is still just a possibility.
so what i am trying to say is that when you are younger you always look forward to being older and when you are older all you want to do is be younger. i think one of the reasons that being young is so amazing is that most of your young life is spent living out the things that you dreamt about prior to those times. so technically that can make being an adult a pretty bleak and dreadful life. i don't think it has to be that way though. i think you could look at it in a peter pan sort of way where you just imagine that you are not really you and live a life apart from reality but that is no good because of the fact that it is not reality. sure if you can lie to yourself really well and somehow magically still function in an adult society this would be great, until you woke up. dont get me wrong, i think imagination is the first step towards living out your dreams and is essential to creativity. but when you use it to replace reality you are only making things worse for yourself. take me for instance, i love harry potter but i am not going to try and live my life vicariously through jk rowlings books or anything. i don't need to imagine that i am in those stories to make my reality go away. i think that richard matheson had an amazing portrayal of hell in 'what dreams may come" as a place that is so horrible because you dont realize that you are acctually in hell. you live, in your mind, somewhere on the outskirts of conciousness. what a scary thought.
or you could try and idealize certain things about growing old and let those things become your life's longing (like working really hard at the office your whole life so that you can buy a motor home when you retire at seventy-five) but i think that would still be way off the mark and hardly as honest and pure as when you are younger. i think that where happiness lies is in the balance between acceptance that we are continually growing closer to death and enjoying the very moment and all the little things about it; and the realization that life is only as sad and boring as we allow it to be. yes, most people have to have real jobs and just 'take it up the tail pipe' if you will, but that does not mean that your life solely consists of being a 'responisible adult.' most people think that they are just doomed to this kind of life so they resort to finding their happiness in either fantasy (porn, tv, tv sports, etc.) or accepting that life can't get any better and obsessing over 'stuff' (tools, work, shopping, cars, politics, money, plastic surgery, furniture, etc.) now these things are just like imagination in that there is nothing initially wrong with them, (maybe except for plastic surgery) but it is very easy to turn them into gods.
i think this last weekend of bridge school road trip was a perfect example of that. we didnt try to be all wild and do all these crazy things on our road trip because we know that we are not kids any more. if we did do that we would quikly realize how old we are and that we were living a lie. what a sad realization that would be. we simply enjoyed the moment as ourselves. that is what it is all about. i think there is beauty and meaning and truth in every second of growing older. that does not necessarily mean that i think you can be happy every second of your life, but just that you are not dead till you are dead.
now i hate doing this because these were just the thoughts off the top of my head. but i know that there is a whole spiritual reality to all of this. i have not abandonded my faith or anything. being completely honest, i will admit that i am in a time of my life right now where i am at a distance with my relationship with Christ but not purposefully. it is my biggest struggle right now. this is just where my thought process took me at this particular moment. ok i am going to stop feeling bad about this now.
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