My Old Soul

Over lunch they said that if they could live their college years over and over again, they’d do it in a heartbeat. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. It’s not that my college years have been miserable, it’s more that I wouldn’t want to live any second of my life over again. I’m always so ready to move forward.

I used to fight against growing up so desperately. I always saw the adult world as being a place of routine complacency. I thought that as I grew older, I’d start to lose that wide-eyed need for adventure and magic. I thought I would have to give up that part of me that likes to jump in puddles and sit under trees and paint with my fingers, just for the hell of it. I thought that growing older meant sacrificing the child within me.

So I fought it. I refused to admit that I was becoming older and wiser. I surrounded myself with children and people with childlike spirits. I began dressing like a child, wearing mismatched clothing in bright colors with strange shoes and big, cheap jewelry. I still played with toys and decorated my life with cartoon apparel. I just thought it was really unfair that I should ever have to grow up.

It’s so strange to think of that now. My life has changed so drastically over these past few years, and I find myself not only ready for the future, but longing for it. That’s not to say I’m not taking the time to enjoy the here and now, but I’m also looking forward to whatever there is to come. I’m ready for things to grow.

It’s so interesting to read comment after comment mentioning how old my soul seems to be. It’s true. I do have an old soul. I’ve always had it, even when I wasn’t ready to recognize it as such. I’m not sure where it came from or how I, of all people, seemed to acquire it, but lately I’ve been spending less time questioning it and more time appreciating it. It can be a really wonderful thing to look at the world that way, through the eyes of someone nearing the end.

I used to think constantly of what I would do if I knew my life was ending. If I only had a certain amount of time left, how would I spend it? Eventually I realized that I do only have a certain amount of time left, and so I made the active choice to make my life what I want it to be. Yes, it might be easier if I knew the specific time I would go, the exact day I needed to be done everything I wanted to experience, but for now, just knowing that it will be someday is enough to inspire me onward.

Onward I go. Not towards death and it’s inevitability, but towards life and it’s opportunity. I decided a long time ago that I would never be rich and successful and accomplished by the world’s definitions of those characteristics, but that I’d be happy in creating my own meanings for them and then searching to fulfill those meanings. I am already rich with the beauty and love and life that I’ve found. I am already successful and accomplished for finding them.

I am already thrilled with the journey of my life, and it’s only just begun. So without that need to fight my way to the top, I’ve found that I have time to do what I initially assumed would be lost. I have time to play. I have time to run around outside and get dirty, to create, to jump and laugh and sing. I have time to allow the child within me to dance with my old soul. I have time to revel in the beauty of that.

I still wear my bold mismatched apparel. I still have my Spongebob covers on the seats of my car. I still laugh and dream and believe, the way that I did as a child, and my old soul watches it all, and smiles.