As I get older I keep realizing my past....inadequacy? I look back on myself a few years ago and wonder what I was thinking. I never outgrow the realization that I didn't know as much as I thought. Someday I'm somehow going to write about how when I was 17 I thought I knew everything. Everything in my mind is thinking that I can look back on this in a few years and think I wasn't a complete tool and yet there's nothing to back that up.
I guess that's what maturity is. It's like - forgive me - any rpg. When you're level one you're generally a dead man walking. You can rock at being a level one but you pale in comparison to people who are higher level, and when you get to level 10 you can go back to those things that slaughtered you and knock them right out. The issues I faced at 11 and 12 seem stupid now but they had me pretty worked up back then.
This is what I need to remember if/when I'm a parent. Sure, a baby losing their favorite toy is trivial in comparison to someone losing their job, but compared to that baby's life it's pretty huge. It's slightly complicated how security blankets work but in a nutshell their happiness revolves around that object because that's their anchor. No matter what confusing things happen (new people holding them, getting sick, loud places, getting tired), there's always this object with them and it makes them happy.
Middle school girls angsting about other middle school girls can feel just painfully stupid but, again, to them this is huge. They are finding a new peer group, they want to fit in but they also want to stand out. They're not a child but not a teenager. Kids can unfortunately be really mean to each other. And not all kids have white picket fence families.
This is what makes me wonder about where I am now. What am I doing wrong? I think I know a lot but what am I missing. I have problems that I'm working on but what if there's even more? I'm not worried about this, just curious. I've been thinking about love lately. But I'm not sure I know what love really is. When I was 12 I thought I did. When I was 16 I really thought I did.
I know what love isn't. I know that God is love.
In my 17-year-old naivete I think that's all I need to know. Maybe life will prove me wrong, but I hope not.
