Never Grow Up.

Do you ever wish you could go back? Back to the days when nothing mattered, back to the days when you could dress how YOU wanted to, not how society wanted you to. Back to the days when you could be friends with whoever you wanted to, and no one would question it. Back to the days when you could freely dream without people telling you it is impossible. Sometimes I wish I could go back, sometimes I wish I could pause and rewind and stay young and careless for a little while longer. I can’t help but laugh when I look back to the worries I once would stress about, how insignificant they are to the worries I face now, yet I know my worries now will also be insignificant in a short while. I remember always talking with my friends; saying things like “I can’t wait to grow up,” and “when I get older I’m going to wear this and do that…” It’s funny how we talk now… “I wish we could go back,” and “remember when we were kids and we could wear this and do that…”

We live in a world where we are pressured to grow up; we are pressured to be people that were not. We live in a world where beauty is portrayed as the skinny supermodel with caked make up posing on the cover of magazines. That’s not beauty; beauty is a person’s heart, the love that should overflow from it. Beauty is how a person treats and acts towards others. It is sad that children as young as ten years old are pressured into being “beautiful,” pressured into looking “right.”

If I could give a young child advice it would be this… enjoy being young, enjoy not having responsibilities, enjoy the freedom! I would tell them to be who they are, be real, have full hearts, love unconditionally. I would tell them to not listen to the views of the world, to not listen to what society declares as “normal.” Though I know this is what I would tell them, what I would hope they would do, I know very well that most young children won’t listen to this advice. I guess I can only hope that one day they will realize this on their own, they will realize that they are young and they should enjoy being young, that they will depend not on the pressures of society but on the condition of their own hearts, making sure that they are as they should be… overflowing with love.