Sunday, August 4, 2013

Who needs grown ups anyway?

If somebody had told me that being a grown up was so difficult. I would have opted against it. (yeah like that's possible.). It's strange when I think about it. I remember the times when all I had to worry about was who I was going to hang around with that day, or what I was going to spend my next installment of 'pocket money' on. I mean, can anyone pinpoint the exact moment that they stopped being kids? It happens so suddenly that you can't even comprehend that it's happening until it's been and gone. In the blink of an eye you're faced with questions that you never even thought about before. What school should I go to? Should I trust these people? How am I going to afford to live from day to day? The things you always heard your parents talking about become real, become something that you have to learn to cope with. It's overwhelming to say the very least.

As we get older we realise that life isn't always a ray of sunshine, despite what we may have previously thought. It starts to get far more serious and challenging than before. It's one hurdle after another. Time and time again we have to prove to ourselves that we can surpass everything and anything, sometimes it's extremely difficult, other times not so much. We make decisions based on how we feel in the heat of the moment, these can be the right ones, or unfortunately a lot of the time they can be so very wrong. But this is nothing to feel disheartened about because in the end you made the decision, dealt with the consequences and moved on. It rapidly becomes a tiny tiny thing in a long line of other things. It becomes insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

I used to look forward to being a grown up. So many opportunities and experiences to be explored. New people to meet. New everything. It all looked so simple from that perspective. Like it was a piece of cake. Oh how very wrong was I? I mean I'm not saying life is bad. Cause it really isn't. It's actually quite beautiful to be honest. I do love life. Most of the time. It's just those times that seem so rough, so rough that it feels like they'll never pass. But they do and they will. In that moment though it's like there's this rain cloud that won't go away, you know the ones that literally stay for days? (okay, that means every cloud in Ireland,I know but just roll with me here). Eventually though, the rain goes away. And what to we find? No rain. Duh.

Lets be honest with ourselves here. We've all made mistakes, some big, some small. At some time or another we've made absolute gobshites out of ourselves. But it's okay, why you ask? Because we live in a world where one gains respect by drinking a large bottle of an alcoholic beverage in under an hour. In my oh so valuable opinion, this gives us the right to act like utter eejits because if that's how you gain respect these days. So be it. Gone are the days where respect meant role models and good attitude. Oh world, what it happening?

I tend to just throw caution into the wind these days. There's no point holding back right? I mean, each day we grow a little older. And although I'm still only a mere twenty (yikes) years old, it feels like I've been on the earth a whole lot longer. Maybe that's because of obstacles I've had to overcome or things I've experienced. I really couldn't tell you why. But I've learned that people are going to have something to say about you either way, so why not give them what they want? Give them something to talk about. Let them waste their precious time thinking about you. Then you'll have won.

In a particularly difficult time of my life a wise (most of the time) man (my Daddy) said to me 'sometimes I think these things were made to test us'. I for one, could not believe he had said it. I mean, I hadn't had a lot of 'inspirational' pep talks with my dad over the years so this definitely made me think. And I realised he's right. I mean what would be the other purpose of challenging times other than to test our coping capabilities. If these are all tests, I want to pass them all. I don't want to fail at life. What a disappointment that would be. The trick is to defeat life, not let life defeat you. Lets let that be a lesson learned.

Another look into my random thoughts. Until next time my little chickens.

"Where'd the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn't stress at all just a run and a jump into a harmless fall" - Paolo Nutini