When we think about our pasts and our childhoods we think about all the memories and experiences we have created throughout the years. As children, our childhood years seemed to have lasted an eternity, and all any child wished for was to grow up. Our awaiting futures were what seemed to be a lifetime away. I think it had to do with the fact that we were waiting to grow up because it always seems that when you’re waiting for something, time slows down. Anyway, being a child made time seem so long. It seemed as if everything happened in slow motion. Five minutes seemed like hours, hours seemed like days, and days seemed endless. In these years, it felt as if each year would never come to an end. But now, it’s as if our childhoods flew by in an instant. And as we grew older, it’s as if time became faster. Everything happens so much quicker. In retrospect, all we truly have to cherish of our childhoods are our memories. The memories that we remember are the highlights of our young selves, and these highlights have molded us into our adult selves. 

As a child, not only did our perception of time feel altered, so was our perception of size. As small beings, everything seemed enormous. Our school seemed huge, the slide on the playground seemed so tall, and the older kids seems so much bigger. In reality, there was no drastic difference in our size, we were just small, little people in a big world, and our minds were too small and too young to understand the complexity of things or to comprehend the importance of the little things in life. Everything was so different back then, but that’s what our childhoods were all about.

As we grew up, not only did we become bigger, everything around us did. Our problems became more challenging, our work became harder, and our lives became more real. The actuality of life finally sunk in as we reached our more adult stages of life. We were no longer living in a perfect, fantasy world; we were living in reality.

Another realization we come to, as we grow up, is that the eyes of our childhood selves saw life so much differently. As children, our innocence consumed us, drowning us of reality and the ability to see beyond the moment or think outside the box. We were trained to stay in our “perfect” world, making us oblivious to what was going on around us. 

The transition from our childhood to adulthood was like putting on a pair of glasses. Without these glasses on, we were still children. Everything seemed so unclear. All that was visible to us were the perfections of life. We were trapped in a world of virtuousness and were protected from the bad things. But going into our adulthood stages of life was like putting on the pair of glasses, and finally being able to see life for what it really was. We were finally able to see reality, it was no longer invisible to us. Nothing was blurry. We finally saw the imperfections and little flaws of life, exposing us to the corruptness in the world. There was no longer a barrier separating us from the real world and no longer someone to protect us.

Our transition into adulthood was a drastic change, a change that altered our way of viewing the world and thinking about life. All our memories and experiences of our childhood have shaped our adulthood. Our childhood is where we discovered ourselves for the first time, where we learned so many life lessons, and where we prepared for our adulthood stages of life.

To get to the point, if asked the question if I miss my childhood, the answer would be yes. I miss the way life was like back then, but I also like the way life is now.  Whether we realize it or not, time flies by quickly and all that is left behind are memories. So since we can’t go back in time, we will just have to cherish the memories and experiences from back then and make the best memories from now on. In the end, memories are all we have to look back upon, the only things we have to remember the past stages of our lives.