The Beginning

Growing up, now that was the easy part of life. It seems as though when you are little, the weight of the world is on someone else. Never for a moment do you stop and worry about the issues that plague the life of an adult. As a child, you care only about the games tomorrow will bring.

We sometimes forget those good old days. Those days filled with laughter, friends, fun, and chocolate covered cherries. The long days spent playing pirate in the woods, whose main concern was to find the buried treasure. The cold winter wind that bit at your face did not faze you as you lay making snow angels on the ground. Nor did the tingling from the freezing finger tips, toes and nose bother you as you rolled for hours making three tiny snowballs into that special snowman.

Oh how the world stood still while you lie on your back beneath the summer sun dreaming up what shape each cloud takes as it rolled by you. All those sleepless Christmas Eves for fear of missing Santa. Those presents piled beneath the tree brought excitement to your eyes and a smile to your face. Waiting for each birthday was a blast, and the cake was good too.

So who would have thought that you would have turned out in the end to be bitter? 'Trying to conquer each day as it passes' you would tell yourself. Often times you find yourself praying that God gives you the strength to make it through the rest of the day.

How did you get to the point in life that you dreaded getting out of bed? You dread it so much that you would rather roll over and go back to sleep then to face the day. Plagued with the thought of all your troubles, you find it hard to look forward to the days events. You are now a prisoner of your own mind, trapped within its very grasp of an endless downward spiral of troubles and sorrows.

Here you stand before the mirror staring at the reflection of someone who's out of shape, has few friends, is low paid, has no real hobbies, and hates their job. You begin to wonder what happened, trying to figure out where you had jumped off of the happy train at.

You are hopelessly a victim of an endless game that life plays. In the end, you know less about you now then you did when you were ten. Ultimately you are living the life that you as a child swore were never going to be lived. You wanted better and it only got worse.

You are now overwhelmed with bills, a family, and a job. So you drag yourself out of bed each morning only to go to a dead end job that you despise working. After work you drive home tired and exhausted to spend a few moments with your family before you sleep. Resting up for the next day, only to start all over again with your life of work and more work. If you are lucky, you will find a little time in your day to do what you want to do.

So now, not only are you bitter, having lost the child in you somewhere between graduating and getting a job, but now you are unhappy too. The truth is, we may never find that spark that made our childhoods special.