I saw Pixar's latest film Inside Out today and I would be lying if I did not say it really affected me. A children's film focusing on the inner workings of an 11 year old girl, personifying her emotions into an adventure of accepting all of her feelings and her growing up as a person sounds like an impossible task! Yet Pixar found a way to get it all done. I was going to write a review on the movie but I feel like it is a done deal job, go watch the movie. It is a masterpiece and will leave you teary eyed while leaving the theater. Also after writing two movie reviews this week I want to do something different.
What I rather write about today is The Departure of Childhood (use post title somewhere in actual post. CHECK!) After coming home from the theater, I could not stop thinking about the moments of being a kid. Those experiences, good and bad, that shape me as a person as I get older. As time passes you learn how complex the world really is, with the places you live and especially the people you are surrounded with. Family, friends, enemies, coworkers, acquaintances, even pets all result in relationships with yourself allowing you to grow and think about how you want to define yourself as a person. Living life as a kid is drastically different than how I live life today. Simply because of the obvious factors, the different time and place, and who I am as a person. I'm smarter, less loud (surprisingly!), and more open to others, to just name a few. But that is not to say I do not completely miss aspects of being a kid.
The moments of true simplicity really describe the average day as a child. Day by day finding simple ways to entertain myself whether it is television shows with no sense of what good or bad T.V. is, along with simple cheap Wal-Mart toys to pass the time. And here I am today still not happy with a movie that has a deeper meaning within it and expensive video games to burn the whole day. I went through some old home videos of me as a kid and seeing how easily I laughed and entertain myself seems almost impossible to recreate today. And I guess this is where this feeling of nostalgia for my childhood brought me feeling chocked up after watching Inside Out. How can I make myself that happy today??? Everything felt so simple back then and now here I am objectively a better person and I do not have my own feelings in check? Are you kidding me?!?!
What a dark scary fear right? Until I realize there is something that makes me equally as happy today if not more! People! Getting older results yourself evolving in a myriad of ways but one factor at least for me seems to be the most important constant one. The relationships with other people. Being able to share your life with another person reveals the beauty of life in general. Relationships come and go and through these relationships with so many different people throughout my life I can recall just as many good and bad experiences that help me become the person I am today. What may be gone is this elementary life style but instead is a beautiful complex life able to be shared with others. This does not mean there are no relationships in childhood, those may be the most important ones! They help shape you into your adolescence and then in turn help you become even more of who you want to be as person later in life. And I think with this realization (and maybe late but better than never appreciation) of relationships throughout life helps me answer the question of, "How can I make myself happy today???" By experiencing life with the people I love and love me. Childhood is a phase in life where there seems to be no complexity, you are the most basic representation of you! I do not think childhood ever left but rather as you get older it becomes more difficult to express who you are because you yourself have become more complex through the experiences you make in life. But I also do not think that feeling of simple joy and laughter in life is forever gone. By spending time with important people in my life I am able to simply just be.
