Birthday ramblings
Today I turned 22 years old. It feels kind of weird to say that. Sometimes 22 years feels like forever and other times it feels like no time at all. There are many big decisions to be made this year as well as some significant milestones. I’m not really sure if I’m ready for them all, but come they will. One of the big events will be graduating from college. So often people, mostly adults, but then it affects their children, say that after college you get into the “real world.” Or during the summers when I have been working people say, “welcome to the ‘real world’.” What is meant by this phrase “the real world”? I’m not really a big fan of it, mostly because it denigrates the place in life that I am in. It carries overtones of not really being in touch with reality and living in some kind of fantasy world. That’s really sad to me, because I would like to think that my life has significance at all stages; that each stage is no “more real” than another. I mean, I am living and breathing; I experience highs and lows in life; there are great relationships and there are difficult ones; that are big decisions to be made and there are the everyday tasks involved with maintaining life. I’m not so sure how all of those things are “less real” than what I will supposedly experience a year from now, but we’ll have to see. Maybe I’m completing missing the point of this whole idea. I guess I’m just trying to figure out how to do this thing called “growing up” and it isn’t always the most encouraging when people keep talking about “the real world” as if what I’m living right now is not “real”. Well, those are just some random thoughts here on my 22nd birthday.