all growed up

So many cool things happen when you're a grown up. You get to stay up late, you can drive, and do cool things like reach the ice cream in the freezer without standing on your tippy toes. Your hands are big enough to actually shuffle a deck of cards without flinging them all over the place. When you're an adult you can wear whatever you want, get a job and have money to buy whatever you want, and you can tell other people what to do. Grown ups are so cool.

There are some things that are clearly visible. Over time you can visibly see your fingernails growing, your roots coming in, or your feet enlarging as your body sprouts upward (or outward). These are all physical things that you can see happen rapidly, even over night! It's not often you hear someone proclaiming "wow, I can see that you've really grown up this past week." I mean, really? How do you see someone grow up?

Sure, our faces change, we get to be bigger people than when we were five, but it is not like "growing up" is a badge to be put on display. It's not a skill that can be practiced for hours. It just happens when it happens. It's something that takes place internally, happening sometimes even when we think it's not. Sometimes life gives us circumstances that force us to change our ways, attitudes, and perspectives, and we then "grow up" through the changes and adjustments that we make to ourselves. Despite life's urges and (sometimes) nasty little schemes, growing up is still a choice, a choice that many are too scared to make.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Is this not a question that we ask every child in our society? Asking them this question provides them a chance to dream, to be who ever they want. It is not very often that an adult will respond negatively to a child's response. Truly if the child wants to be an astronaut who is the adult to deny or crush the dreams? It's funny how as a child you are never content in your childhood. Actually, it's really sad. Society pushes each child to 'grow up' faster, loading on stress factors, tests, extracurricular activities, all in pursuit to be the most "well-rounded" child. Not to mention the family dilemmas and social issues that can have a lifelong effect on a child. As adults the mentality and sensitivity of a child is often forgotten. Calloused and burdened, adults lay on expectations, mentalities and attitudes onto children, stifling them from the innocence and purity they were created to have.

So much of our childhood goes by without us realizing what we have. It is human nature, to rarely be content with where we are. We're kids, we want to grow up. We grow up, we want our childhood back. My past summer experience taught me how to re-embrace my childhood in a way that I never had before. Not only was I working with kids all day long, but there was a sense of freedom in being whoever I wanted to be. I experienced a joy and delight that I had never been able to attain in a normal every-day grown-up life. What's with that?! I made a challenge to myself that I would strive to embrace my childhood more in my everyday life. You can too!

I have been thinking a lot about "growing up" recently because of the crossroads that is soon to come. There was a time when people in college seemed to be in another planet. The idea of me ever being in college was so far away because I could never imagine myself as that old person. Old people go to college. Now I'm a person who is leaving college. I am a person who is going to start a life unscripted, who is going to live abroad for a year.  What does that make me? I would love to go back in time and interview myself and see just what I would say. What would the seven-year-old version of me say if I told myself that I was going to China? If I majored in music-education? If I did all the things that I've done?

I can tell you this: I had most definitely throughout all of my life set my expectations too low for who I can and will be.

In relation to this I had the opportunity to teach private voice lessons last semester. Our "final" for the class was to merely write a reflection paper about the class and our experience in teaching... that would be a fun student to blog about some time. Regardless of the adventures I had with my voice student, I reflected heavily upon my concern for change. Of course, over time my style of teaching and teaching abilities are going to change (and hopefully improve), but I raised the question of "at what point will I stop being the 'cool-and-hip teacher' and turn into the 'that-old-teacher-lady'?" My brilliant professor Ms. Elaine Henderson answered with this: "You never have to reach that point. Look at me."

And by gum, she is absolutely right. We're talking about the woman who joined us on an excursion to see Harry Potter VII, who spent class time telling us how to make moonshine, and who allowed our final exam to take place at Panera.

To society I tell you this, I think that Peter Pan had it right when he proclaimed "I won't grow up" (I'm currently reading it right now, thus all the references). There is always going to be an inner child in me that will always be sure to peek its way out. I am a stubborn person, and the child child within me is just as stubborn. She's gunna be around for as long as I am. In fact, I'm pretty sure the girl in this picture is me when I was a kid...