Growing up

   For almost as long as I can remember, I have been trying to grow up faster. I had a tendency to be rather precocious when I was younger, and wanted nothing more than to get this "growing up" business over and done with. It seemed like a time when you are not taken seriously even though sometimes you have something good to say, and that frustrated me. So, I started a quest for learning. I love to learn, and love to share what I have learned with everyone. The words, "Did you know that..." have been my close, constant companion, along with all those lovely question words. I find that Rudyard Kipling summed it up quite well;

"I keep six honest serving-men

  (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who."

    And yet now as I get a little older, and am now having a bit more freedom, I am finding myself yearning for childhood. I want to just go have fun, to dance under the moonlight. I want to listen to my music loudly and I want to run, jump, and just generally be an idiot before I am expected to be confined by adulthood. I am finding myself wishing for health when I do not have it consistently, and each day I find myself in a state of almost tense resignation of another "episode." I worry about little things, and find that my precocious nature when I was younger has robbed me of, well, I am not quite sure, but there is something lost from it.
    God put this experience of "growing up" in our lives for a reason, though, even if I find my own lacking. I guess the world needs some people to grow up fast, but can I never be a child again? Even the adults with the most childish natures, I discover often have a much darker, deep-thinking side that they hide under the simplicity of childhood. Maybe the whole point of childhood is God showing us what he wants from us; that the world really isn't as big and complicated as we say it is, that some fears are silly, and that the best messages are often the simplest and most direct. That, devotion, is with one's whole heart given with a smile.
    But do I really want to go back to that state? I look back and find myself hopelessly naive, easily impressed upon, easily pricked to emotion, and oh, so stubborn. Perhaps it is good that I have grown up, but then again, perhaps it is good that I have not fully yet.
    And, did anyone ever notice that the years before 18 are oft described as "the best of one's life" and that we should enjoy them, and not waste our precious youth, and yet no one ever seems to want to go relive high school once beyond it? Ah, the irony...