Chapter Two

It’s a strange thing, growing up.

As children, it seems as if we have everything figured out. But that childlike certainty unravels with the strands of time. When we are young, we dream. When we grow up, we plan. It’s sad, really, that in the English language we have two separate words for plans and dreams.

In my life, I intend for those two to be one and the same.

Too often, dreams are passing thoughts that exist only to be dismissed into the same realm as magic and happily-ever- afters. Dreams have become wishes made upon stars - fleeting desires that can only be considered in the most private, uninhibited moments of a person’s life; the moments that only bring shame when the sun rises to dispel the secrecy of night.

Dreams were never like that for me. There have been times in my life, times that stretch far too long, where dreams were all that I had to hold onto. It’s strange, how much you learn about life when you have nothing but your future giving you a will to live.

It is a harsh thing, growing up.

When we are young, we are told to believe in impossible, beautiful things.   We are told fairy-tales and stories about dragons and princes and princesses – stories that fill us with hope and laughter and an idea of what honor really is.

Then we start to grow up. As we do, people tear apart our precious world, replacing it with one not nearly as bright or beautiful as the one we knew before. Castles are traded for skyscrapers; armor for a suit; and the happily-ever-after ending for wealth.

We all become the villains in the stories we once knew so well – for what story contains a hero or heroine who desires wealth above all else? And yet that is what we are taught as we grow up. We work hard in high-school to get into a good college; we work hard in college to get a good job; we get a good job to make good money; and we make good money so that we can retire well. Before we know it, our life is spent and we have nothing to show for it.

If more people remembered the lessons taught to us through stories in our youth, the world would be a better place. Maybe more men would be chivalrous and less women would be promiscuous. Maybe there would be more of happily-ever-after, and less of divorce.

I intend to live my life as if my plans are my dreams, and as if I am the heroine of my story. I intend to stop chasing after the material, to stop pursuing the broken, superficial idea of what is important in life; an idea that has taken over society.

We should be listening, not just hearing; seeing, and not just watching. But most of all, we should be living, not just existing. After all, as Peter Pan said, to live would be an awfully big adventure.