I have a confession to make: I still live with my parents. Truly shocking, I know. I’m twenty-one years old! I should be out on my own in my own apartment with my own income to provide for myself as I spend my days inching closer to my degrees (yes, as in more than one) in order to forge my own path. Well I hate to break it to ya, but some of us are just late bloomers. I’m already having one hell of a time trying to balance school, church, exercise, social life, good grades, time for myself, and a healthy sleep cycle without having to worry about doing my own laundry. I can’t promise all of those things are going so well, but that’s a topic for another day.

Anyways, the time finally came around recently for me to begin cleaning out my room. This was a bit of a conundrum because have a bit of a tendency to hold on to things that may contain sentimental/monetary value of some kind, which means that I’m reluctant to throw a lot of stuff away. (“I could put away my high school graduation cap, but that was one of the happiest days of my life so….”). My parents know this and so suggested that, instead of throwing it away, just putting it away in boxes. That way in X amount of years later they would still be there and not take up so much room. I agreed and, after finally having the time, begun to clear out my room.

Naturally I became sentimental as I gently placed my BIONICLEs, high school drama scripts, and capes won from Magic Mountain carnival games into their boxes, revisiting the good times each were associated with. But as I was doing this, I remembered a quote that I heard a while back from C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and one of my personal heroes, talking about adulthood.

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

What he’s saying here is that growing up doesn’t mean outgrowing the things you love, putting on a suit and tie every morning with no time for the things that made you wide-eyed with wonder when you were a child. It means becoming your own person, determining who you are as a person and human being.

I may have been physically putting my things away into storage, but I realized that the experiences they carried are not only imprinted into my memories, but also onto my character. The great tales of adventure and excitement gave me wonder and a desire to live life to the fullest. The multitude of worlds I visited nourished my creativity and appreciation for own. And the stories of friendship, perseverance, and love made me want to be a better person. All of this shaped who I am and helped me see who I want to be.

So if it’s considered childish to still be awestruck at the weird and wonderful, to want to go on a great adventure, or think about the things beyond ourselves, then I guess that makes me childish. But honestly? I wouldn’t want to be any other way.