17

12/9/2011

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Lately I've been around a 17/18 year old and I started thinking about who I was and how I saw the world when I was that age. Really it wasn't that long ago. This isn't a post about how about how much I've changed, because really I haven't. This isn't even really about the things I wish I had known, because that's just not how life how works. 
Picture
me at 17
Picture
me at 21
Now don't get me wrong, everyone has changed from who they were at age 17 [hopefully]. Heck, I feel like I've changed from who I was when I was 20! But really when I'm around the teenager, all I can think of is a few key things that my eyes have been opened to:
-Everyone is different. That's something my younger friends constantly teach me, mainly because of the way that they haven't learned it yet. I have no idea how it's been so thoroughly pounded into my head, but it is a major Truth in my life. Which is always something I realize when someone is saying something to me that they truly believe applies to everyone and all I can think about is..."wonder when they'll learn?"
--Things aren't as big as they seem. Most of the time if something is a humongous deal, if you try and remember what it was a few weeks later you can't. Because it just wasn't that big of a thing. [Yet another thing I think of when I'm around my younger friends. It's like...CHILL YO. haha]
---Cherish your parents. Just take that statement and times it times 10.

But really?
I do wish I had known who I would be. Who I would eventually let myself be. The person who poses for pictures with a funny face and hops around and dances in the store. That's who I wanted to be when I was 17, but it just wouldn't come out. I wish I could tell the teenager that life never goes how you think it's going to, even when you have quite the plan. And "go with the flow" involves way more than being easy going. 
And to laugh more. Forgive more. Let stuff roll off your back more. 

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