Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
-Chilli Davis
A quick note before this:
In this piece I try and move away from my typical writing style and attempt (key word there) a calmer, more conversationalist tone. This change is mostly for the cause of diversity, of which I am an avid proponent. Enjoy (or don’t).
Though I try not to admit it, I was always an impressionable kid. I was the kid who walked behind the high-schoolers with an over exaggerated swagger because I was cool like that. Despite my adamant six year old self, I now realize I was not, in fact, a carbon copy of adolescence. I was probably the same as any other kid, only with more energy. This becomes more apparent to me with each anecdote I hear of my childhood, most are of simple innocence (the time I found out what girls are), some of my unyielding stubbornness (I didn’t eat for a week because my mother refused to feed me blue cheese), but there is a small percentage of stories that are of a boy, who desperately wanted to grow up. These stories are few, and may seem to be passing moments easily explained and put down to some psychological curiosity or woven into the unending debate of nature versus nurture; yet these are the stories that ring a bell with me, because I still am that credulous child, begging for the ideal of maturity I was, and am, so captivated by.
These stories are simple enough, slivers of hope, normally characterized by a passing moment registered only by the twinkle of an eye, and a small kid captivated by the first glimmer of hope. Hope that his horizon was inching ever closer. A perfect example of one of these moments took place at Heathrow airport. I must have been younger than 10, but older than 6, because I was attending Chandlings Manor (great school if anyone’s interested), I put myself at 7-8 years in my mind, but any of the ages in that spectrum serve just as well. At seven years old, I was comfortably sprawled across a few chairs, probably waiting for a flight and watching the passing multitude, picking one out and crafting a story for them, linking it to the next stranger, designing their lives for the brief moments they passed through mine. Mid way through my loafing hubris, I noticed a small band of friends cut through the multitude. They were about five strong, and the epitome of teen hood. As they strolled thorough my field of vision, no one paid them much attention, but as always, there was a starry eyed observer in an unobserved corner, who had just seen what his horizon looked like. Every dream half envisioned in the back of a stale car, every hopeful desire whispered to only myself, every daydream, and every wish upon a star had suddenly found home in the form of five clueless teenagers. The little boy in the corner had seen his horizon. It was less than a moment, but that was all the kid needed, he memorized them, idealized them, lifted them above any other person and held them there like a beacon, they were his horizon. This ethereal moment was soon over, as an aging man in a mackintosh shushed them, and the throng of lesser beings swallowed them.
Since that moment, the kid began to grow up, and he found a lot of other role models to emulate, but they were only ever a foggy reflection of those five teenagers. I don’t mean by this, that the other people in my life meant nothing to me, I learnt a lot from a lot of people, but I would always revert back to that day in Heathrow. In the ten years that have passed since that fateful day, I have not been idle; I have been very busy growing up. In that time I threw my first punch, received my first punch fell in love and had my heart broken, I have laughed and given others cause to laugh, lost myself in words, watched my limbs fill out as the suppleness of childhood has been replaced by tougher, sinewy material, I was incredibly confused when I thought my hair was falling off and getting stuck to my chin, luckily I found a small blade and with the help of my cousin I learnt to shave. I found out that what I was once sure was distilled cyanide is, in fact, a bitter substance called beer (of which I am quite fond). In a lot of ways, the kid changed; he grew up in a traditional sense. His body changed his mind turned to new pastimes, he began to understand the meaning and power of words, and he learnt to love them. So, sure he grew up, he’s older, moodier, and has a lot more to say about the world. Sadly, I only grew up in the very strict sense of word. There are times, as fleeting as the stories of a kid with his head in the clouds of time, that I lie back, and from the deepest corners of my muscle memory, adopt the same lolled position from that day in Heathrow, and begin to dream. To dream of my horizon, that perfectly balanced state of reckless adolescent abandon.
Sadly for me, this kid didn’t know the exact definition of horizon, and he didn’t know how disillusioned he would be when he came to the aching realization of what his truly meant. A horizon is the limit of a person’s imagination, or knowledge. Unattainable.
Though I will never be that kid again, I have come to realize that I will never be what I saw in those five teenagers. Though that may seem to be an obvious statement, they were never five lads going on tour to me. They were my beacons to a better state. My horizon. They were my constant longing for a self-romanticized concept of maturity, freedom, comfort, bliss, camaraderie, belonging, passion, love, caring... anything a small boy sitting in his room would imagine, anything he could dare let himself wish for. Since then, I have encountered each one of those, individually. Each comes and goes, each inches me forward to my idyllic horizon, but it remains just that. My unattainable horizon. So, this kid I told you about, a compact little creature, he held a whole world inside him, his eyes shone bright with dreams of a better state, his head full of what he did not yet have. He turned into me. My eyes are a little duller than they were, my head now full of what I never had. I saw the embodiment of what I wished for, when I dared to dream I forgot about the flipside of my ideals. Not that this has left me disillusioned with life, I said my eyes were duller, not that they had lost their light. It has simply left me in a kind of limbo: one where I cannot return with stars in my eyes, yet I can’t reach the stars that once lit up my eyes.
-Chilli Davis
A quick note before this:
In this piece I try and move away from my typical writing style and attempt (key word there) a calmer, more conversationalist tone. This change is mostly for the cause of diversity, of which I am an avid proponent. Enjoy (or don’t).
Though I try not to admit it, I was always an impressionable kid. I was the kid who walked behind the high-schoolers with an over exaggerated swagger because I was cool like that. Despite my adamant six year old self, I now realize I was not, in fact, a carbon copy of adolescence. I was probably the same as any other kid, only with more energy. This becomes more apparent to me with each anecdote I hear of my childhood, most are of simple innocence (the time I found out what girls are), some of my unyielding stubbornness (I didn’t eat for a week because my mother refused to feed me blue cheese), but there is a small percentage of stories that are of a boy, who desperately wanted to grow up. These stories are few, and may seem to be passing moments easily explained and put down to some psychological curiosity or woven into the unending debate of nature versus nurture; yet these are the stories that ring a bell with me, because I still am that credulous child, begging for the ideal of maturity I was, and am, so captivated by.
These stories are simple enough, slivers of hope, normally characterized by a passing moment registered only by the twinkle of an eye, and a small kid captivated by the first glimmer of hope. Hope that his horizon was inching ever closer. A perfect example of one of these moments took place at Heathrow airport. I must have been younger than 10, but older than 6, because I was attending Chandlings Manor (great school if anyone’s interested), I put myself at 7-8 years in my mind, but any of the ages in that spectrum serve just as well. At seven years old, I was comfortably sprawled across a few chairs, probably waiting for a flight and watching the passing multitude, picking one out and crafting a story for them, linking it to the next stranger, designing their lives for the brief moments they passed through mine. Mid way through my loafing hubris, I noticed a small band of friends cut through the multitude. They were about five strong, and the epitome of teen hood. As they strolled thorough my field of vision, no one paid them much attention, but as always, there was a starry eyed observer in an unobserved corner, who had just seen what his horizon looked like. Every dream half envisioned in the back of a stale car, every hopeful desire whispered to only myself, every daydream, and every wish upon a star had suddenly found home in the form of five clueless teenagers. The little boy in the corner had seen his horizon. It was less than a moment, but that was all the kid needed, he memorized them, idealized them, lifted them above any other person and held them there like a beacon, they were his horizon. This ethereal moment was soon over, as an aging man in a mackintosh shushed them, and the throng of lesser beings swallowed them.
Since that moment, the kid began to grow up, and he found a lot of other role models to emulate, but they were only ever a foggy reflection of those five teenagers. I don’t mean by this, that the other people in my life meant nothing to me, I learnt a lot from a lot of people, but I would always revert back to that day in Heathrow. In the ten years that have passed since that fateful day, I have not been idle; I have been very busy growing up. In that time I threw my first punch, received my first punch fell in love and had my heart broken, I have laughed and given others cause to laugh, lost myself in words, watched my limbs fill out as the suppleness of childhood has been replaced by tougher, sinewy material, I was incredibly confused when I thought my hair was falling off and getting stuck to my chin, luckily I found a small blade and with the help of my cousin I learnt to shave. I found out that what I was once sure was distilled cyanide is, in fact, a bitter substance called beer (of which I am quite fond). In a lot of ways, the kid changed; he grew up in a traditional sense. His body changed his mind turned to new pastimes, he began to understand the meaning and power of words, and he learnt to love them. So, sure he grew up, he’s older, moodier, and has a lot more to say about the world. Sadly, I only grew up in the very strict sense of word. There are times, as fleeting as the stories of a kid with his head in the clouds of time, that I lie back, and from the deepest corners of my muscle memory, adopt the same lolled position from that day in Heathrow, and begin to dream. To dream of my horizon, that perfectly balanced state of reckless adolescent abandon.
Sadly for me, this kid didn’t know the exact definition of horizon, and he didn’t know how disillusioned he would be when he came to the aching realization of what his truly meant. A horizon is the limit of a person’s imagination, or knowledge. Unattainable.
Though I will never be that kid again, I have come to realize that I will never be what I saw in those five teenagers. Though that may seem to be an obvious statement, they were never five lads going on tour to me. They were my beacons to a better state. My horizon. They were my constant longing for a self-romanticized concept of maturity, freedom, comfort, bliss, camaraderie, belonging, passion, love, caring... anything a small boy sitting in his room would imagine, anything he could dare let himself wish for. Since then, I have encountered each one of those, individually. Each comes and goes, each inches me forward to my idyllic horizon, but it remains just that. My unattainable horizon. So, this kid I told you about, a compact little creature, he held a whole world inside him, his eyes shone bright with dreams of a better state, his head full of what he did not yet have. He turned into me. My eyes are a little duller than they were, my head now full of what I never had. I saw the embodiment of what I wished for, when I dared to dream I forgot about the flipside of my ideals. Not that this has left me disillusioned with life, I said my eyes were duller, not that they had lost their light. It has simply left me in a kind of limbo: one where I cannot return with stars in my eyes, yet I can’t reach the stars that once lit up my eyes.