Remember when you were five and you watched teenagers wander around without their parents?
Remember when you were 10 and you saw older teens shopping for themselves?
Remember when you were five and 10, how much you wished you were older and in their shoes?

Well I do.

I remember when I was a young child and wanted nothing but to be held responsible for my decisions. When I wanted nothing but to be able to make my own decisions. When I wanted nothing but to able to think for myself, and thereby shop for myself.

Back then, maybe it was so simple that we wanted to complicate it further. We wanted to have freedom. We wanted to have our own apartment, our own closet, our own room, our own car. But what we didn't know when we were five is that, with that kind of responsibility, comes a terrible burden.

We lose our innocence. We lose a simpler kind of freedom, where we can be dependent on others to make the decisions we don't want to make.

Sure, choosing our own clothes is easy since it all boils down to taste, but what about which health insurance plan we want to use? How much we are willing to spend on monthly rent?

I always believed that growing up would be fun. It would be like a movie, when we grow up we would become glamorous, have a wonderful job, husband/wife, house, and whatever else we need.

But it isn't.

And it took me turning 20 to truly understand that I can no longer be a child. I can no longer be depending on my parents for the things I need, and for them to make the decisions I don't want to make.

But just because I am now older and not in the "glamorous" life I always believed, I keep wanting to fast forward to the next five years, to the next 10 years. I want to fast-forward to college graduation. I want to fast-forward to landing a stable job in a less-than-stable international economy. I want to fast-forward to having my own apartment with the person I love. And yet, I never stop to just enjoy the moment.

What happened to the younger days of living one day at a time? What happened to slowing down and giving ourselves time to just relax and chill? What happened is life happened. With age, we become obsessed with planning our future. We become obsessed with going by a carefully laid plan that we have concocted.

Stop.

That is something that we all have to tell ourselves, every day.

Stop and enjoy the sunshine.
Stop and enjoy swimming with your friends.
Stop and enjoy dinner with your family.
Stop and enjoy holding hands with the person you love.

Stop making plans for the rest of your life.

Because guess what? It won't work out the way you plan it. It just won't. Life isn't that kind (unfortunately).

So stop, relax, and live.

Live the life you dreamed of when you were five. Live the life you wanted when you were 10. Because it's now or never. We won't always remain 20, or 22. We will age, and there is no stopping it, so all we can truly do now is live the life we want so we will have nothing to regret on our deathbeds.

Don't strive for a life of possibilities. Instead, strive for a life of no regrets. That is all we can and should wish for.