When we look back to our young lives, one thing that almost everyone reflects on is the simplicity of our lives 13 years ago. I, for one, know that I would love to come home from kindergarten, grab a chocolate chip granola bar and juice box, and watch old Spongebob episodes. Instead, we have class, work for those classes, and jobs to balance while also trying to keep ourselves from being overworked.
As we ALL know, that’s usually easier said than done.
I’m not telling you that you have to drop everything and revert back to your 6 year old self. I’m not telling you to stop paying your bills because you could buy so many dino nuggets with that kind of money. What I’m trying to say is that we should remember and hold onto certain things from our youth in order to make our adult lives more bearable. We can’t drop everything and go back to preschool, yet there were some things we didn’t appreciate until we had to drop $300 for a textbook. As a result, I think we all need to remember why exactly we all should hold onto a tiny piece of our youth.
1. Nostalgia
I’ll admit it. I downloaded “Pokémon GO!” as soon as I found out it was available, mainly because I have been playing the games for the past 12 years. I loved my first adventure where I stepped into Route 1 with my Pikachu that I had named “Picky,” loving the happy music as it dinged along to my steps. As soon as I heard about the app, my inner 8 year old sprang forth, and I knew I needed it immediately. I wanted to pretend I was a kid again, even in such a small and insignificant way. Nostalgia encourages us to remember the positive parts of our childhood.
2. Life is simpler
Adulthood is hard. It isn’t always fun getting up before the sun rises to go to work so you can pay bills so you can literally survive. We need to hold onto a piece of our simpler lives for our own sanity. Stress takes over our lives today. We need something to help us escape the horrors of 15 page papers or our upcoming calculus test. For our own mental health, we must find some thought that helps us relax. Most of the time, these thoughts branch from memories we have, and we can thus calm ourselves by remembering our uncomplicated young lives.
3. Friendships were easier to make
“Hey, can I sit with you?” How many friendships when you were in elementary school started off something like this? Straightforward human interaction was all it took to find the goodness in a person. We shouldn’t necessarily open up to everyone we meet, but the open-minded friendliness of a child is something that adults today could really use. We are so quick to judge, to hate, to wish we didn’t have to spend time with certain people. And why? Why can’t we just be nice?
4. Honesty
If we weren’t happy, we said so. If we thought someone wasn’t being nice, we would call them out. We didn’t pretend to be okay with things that hurt us. We were more honest because we were allowed to be. I think that kind of honesty is something that we need to adopt into adulthood. Why should I be okay with that comment? Why should I ignore the fact that my friends are being rude? Why should I tell someone it’s okay when it’s really not? I’m not saying we should go out of our ways to tell everyone we dislike why we don’t like them. I think we should try to be appropriate with what we say and how we say it, but to mean everything we say.
5. Love
I observed a kindergarten class this past semester, and one thing I noticed was that the kids were unafraid to express themselves. Much of this connects with the “Honesty” point, and their expression was often filled with love. Everyone would be sitting on the carpet, and while my teacher was talking, a student would blurt out that they loved the teacher. Every single time, without fail, she said she loved them too. The honesty that children have is unparalleled, and it shows that they love easily and want to express it. Imagine a world where we loved like children.
We can’t simply go back in time to before we had real worries. We can’t drop our adult lives so that we can play video games all day. However, we should appreciate whatever we can do to make sure we keep our inner child happy. Read a book meant for middle schoolers, and if it’s appropriate, laugh at it. Go on a walk to hunt for Pokémon. Go see "Finding Dory." Make a Build-A-Bear for someone. Eat fruit snacks and take a bath instead of a shower every once in a while. Enjoy the small relief you have from the real world.
