Remember when you were young and you had those moments that were so exciting? You don't know how they happened or why they happened, but they just made you feel that way. I think you know what you want from a young age. Whether it be your favorite game or ice cream flavor, who you want to spend the rest of your life with when you're older, or what you want to be when you graduate. It just feels right, kind of like your gut telling you. That's why we get that excitement at such an early age, a sense of energy and joy out of life and what you have to look forward to; it's because you already know.
Our 7-year-old selves knew this, but as we got older, we began to over think and complicate things. I mean, on a lesser-scale, but we experience that same certainty of "right-ness" we feel when we pick out our favorite ice-cream flavor at age seven that we do eleven years later down the line when we pick the college that fits us best, or even another ten years later when we decide we want to settle down.
I am convinced that in a way that I trust a 7-year-old to make more decisive decisions than I do because they trust themselves, and I I admire that. I mean, really, I have four-year-old customers who come into work to get ice-cream, and they know before even looking at the flavors that they want the "blue one." There's no real reason why they want that one other than they like the color, and that's enough for them.
When I decide what I want to do for the rest of my life, I want to get that same feeling of excitement I got as a kid when my mom made me carrot cake cupcakes for my birthday or I got a new box of crayons, you know when they are all sharp and vibrant and fresh. I think that's how I know I picked the right thing. We all will know.
We change a lot between the time of childhood and adulthood. We know more, we learn, and we experience. There are a lot of factors that contribute to who we become, but really, you're the same. We are the purest part of who we are before we get caught up in the dangers of the world, whether it be a lack of priority, toxic relationships, selfishness, etc. I mean, we don't have those things as a kid for the most part, but those are the things that shape us. They play into who we already are and lead us to who we want to be, with the certainty of a 7-year-old. It's rather hopeful, isn't it?
